About Me

I'm a stay at home mom, of two boys, originally from the West Coast (Seattle Area) but now live on the East Coast (Princeton, NJ) due to hubby's work.

When did I start running?

I started running when I was in elementary school. I did track and field since the 4th grade, but the only difference was that I loved sprinting. I was a sprinter/jumper. I basically did the 100m relay and long or triple jump all through elementary school into high school. I hated long distance running. I was one of those girls who tried to get out of doing the long runs, or we'd go on what was called a Cinnabon run and we'd run to the mall, get a quick Cinnabon and run back :) LOL, it was that bad. Fun times though! 

I got into long distance running when I was in college and figured I needed some sort of exercise. I did a few runs like the St. Patrick's Day Dash and some 5ks, but I never thought I'd do a half marathon. I ran here and there, but was never consistent. I seriously started running, seriously as in working up to my first half marathon, back in 2005. I ran the Seattle Half Marathon with some friends and it was a great experience. My chip time was 2:20:03. At the time I was happy with it because it was my first and I was just happy I ran a half marathon. After that I signed up for more half marathons. I ran two more half marathons before I ran the Seattle Half again. What was pretty cool was the second time I ran the Seattle half I brought my time to just under 2 hours. I was so happy when that happened. My chip time was around 1:59:41. It's not official because it was never recorded (there was something wrong with my chip) but I know it was that time because I crossed the finish line with my soon to be husband with hands raised. It was an awesome run, especially since I ran it with my soon to be hubby. :)

After that, I guess you can say I took a break from running, with wedding planning and our love of hiking, we spent more time on those things. Major accomplishment with my hubby was we summited Mt. Rainier. If you think a half marathon is hard, getting to the top of Mt. Rainier was by far the hardest thing I'd ever done at that point. The thing that tops Mt. Rainier was having my two little boys, but of course that came later. :) 

The wedding was in 2008 and in 2009, we had our first son in June. That's where the running comes back into the picture. I gained 40lbs, yes 40lbs with my first son and to top things off, I had signed up for the lottery of the Nike Women's Half marathon in San Francisco in October and actually got in. It worked out great, because I lost almost all of my pregnancy weight while training for the NIke Women's half and I ran it in a decent time. Chip time was 2:16:32, not bad after having given birth 4 months prior. 

Anyway, I've kept up with the running here and there, and now that I've had my second son and used running to lose the weight, I'm just enjoying running in races to keep up my habit and love for running. I enjoy staying fit and I would really like to just improve and keep it up.