Five-year anniversary run

As far as I know, yesterday wasn't the exact anniversary of anything important in my life.

But as I ran around Raccoon River Park, the mix of fall and summer weather, plus the forested gravel trail, I kept reminiscing about similar places I used to run — the Stone Bridge Trail in Roscoe, Ill.; Schmeekle Reserve in Stevens Point, Wis.

I rode that wave of nostalgia all the way back to 2008. That fall, I went on my first non-rain-related run since high school.

I didn't get hooked on it until spring 2009. But if I hadn't, one fall evening, for absolutely no reason at all, seen how far I could jog around my neighborhood until I got exhausted (not very far), there would've been no springtime running obsession.

So I guess it's the equivalent of first-date anniversary versus wedding anniversary, and as I have married friends who celebrate both of those milestones (and why not?), I think I'm well within my rights to declare my first five-year running anniversary.

I am also exercising a little bit of poetic license, because the run during which I thought "huh, it's been about five years now, give or take a month" was a rousing success.

Spurred by some gentle teasing, I decided to at least run the 10K my training schedule told me that I should do this weekend in a race. Going fast wasn't necessarily my intention, but it happened.

Five years after I couldn't even run half a mile, I ran 6.2 miles at an 8:25 pace. The later miles were a little bit of a struggle, for sure, but I have a hunch that they still felt better than that first quarter-mile in fall 2008.

(Which, by the way, was definitely uphill. Raccoon River, on the other hand, is beautifully flat.)

It's hard for me to say what I'm prouder of: that I've come so far with running, or that I've stuck with it through the bumps.

It's also hard for me, as an inherently unathletic person and as someone self-conscious about bragging, to acknowledge how I got to this point.

For all the credit I jokingly give to beer and pork (which I consume more now than ever), or the pointing at perfect weather and terrains, this is actually because I'm putting in the effort. Discipline and persistence is paying off.

Last week was great for running

My old blog, Get Running, appealed to runners as well as nonrunners because I didn't bog them down with splits and complicated workouts measured in metric increments. (That's partly because I don't bog myself down with any of those things, either.)

So while I'm thrilled about last week's numbers, generally speaking, the goal here is not to cite too many figures or to wax too rhapsodically about my efforts.

That said, I have to repeat, stunned, my splits from last Monday's run: 8:55, 8:49, 9:49 and 8:44. If you don't remember/weren't in Des Moines that day, it was crazy windy in the late afternoon, which is when I decided to run a loop.

So there's a reason each mile is what it was: 8:55 was downhill with the wind at my back; 9:49, uphill with the wind in my face. 8:49 and 8:44 were on beautifully flat stretches.

Still — daaaaamn! And more importantly, it felt great. That wind definitely blew a ton of cobwebs out of my brain, and brushed a lot of oh-my-god-you-spent-three-hours-on-your-couch grossness off my skin.

Tuesday's numbers were not quite as sexy, but they represented my breaking last year's recorded run/walk mileage of not quite 670 miles. (Emphasis should be placed on "recorded," because I wasn't tracking tourism-related walking as diligently as I am this year.)

Thursday stunk in regards to performance. I was able, however, to psych myself up for the run — before I felt bleh and overly warm with long sleeves on — by deciding to run a familiar route clockwise rather than counterclockwise, like always. And I was also able to justify it by knowing that it still leaves hills at the end, even though I attacked it from a different angle.

Then Saturday — oh, lovely Saturday! — I found myself in the Iowa City metro area on a crisp, 60-degree day at Sugar Bottom. Aside from the giggle-inducing name, Sugar Bottom had a nice gravel path through the woods that gave me wonderful flashbacks to northern Illinois' Stone Bridge Trail.

Also giggle-inducing (but frightening as well): the names of some Sugar Bottom trails. I did not encounter the Troll Bridge or Becky's Revenge, though one hill did feel like a Hell Trail.

I'm very grateful for Des Moines' city trails, which wind through green space and muffle traffic noises, and I'm grateful for the solid sidewalk system, too. But I cut my running teeth on country roads and small-town paths. Sugar Bottom felt like home, and I felt like a million bucks after that run (and a delicious breakfast at Bluebird Cafe).