My Personal Running History (part 1)

For those who are interested, I thought I’d set down (in serial fashion) how I got to this point... As I mentioned, I’ve been running since 8th grade, running the mile and half mile at Independence Jr. High. I tried out for the hurdles, but the coach suggested I run with the distance boys (I had the form, he said, just not the speed). At Princess Anne High School, I moved up to the mile and two mile during indoor and outdoor track and 5Ks during the fall cross-country season. I was OK, but nothing fabulous, i.e. colleges weren’t beating a path to my door offering me a running scholarship. I think my fastest 5K was 17:22 and my fastest mile was 4:45 and 2 mile was about 10 minutes. But I don’t really remember.

After high school, my running became much more sporadic. Certainly nothing regular and no races other than an occasional charity race in college or during law school. When I started working at a D.C. law firm in 1995, my running slowly became more regular. Not the daily runs I do now though. I probably was on the treadmill 3 or so times a week at lunch, occasionally venturing outside. My roommate was training for the Marine Corps Marathon, and I would sometimes run with him through Glover Park – maybe doing 8 miles.



In November 1995, my roommate and his girlfriend decided that they would set me up on a date with the girlfriend’s friend. When my roommate’s girlfriend described me on the phone to her friend she said I was athletic and I was told that the friend was athletic. We double dated at a local pizza place in Glover Park and things went pretty well. We started dating pretty soon after that.

She was also a runner. My lunchtime running didn’t change much at first, but Jordana and I would go running a lot on the weekend in Glover Park or in Rock Creek Park. Nothing major, probably no more than 6 to 8 miles. But we would talk and talk and talk. We talked a lot about life and what we wanted out of life. I think these “running dates” more than anything else made us realize what must follow. As I said, we met on a blind date in November and we were engaged by July and married the following March.

After we got married, we were in an apartment near Van Ness right off Rock Creek Park. Every weekend we’d run down into the park. Sometimes we’d turn south and run to the Zoo and back. Sometimes we’d turn north and run to the park police station (those who run in Rock Creek will know what I’m talking about). Meanwhile, I was running almost every day at lunch by now. Especially after I left the firm in 1997 and went to the government. Those were great days. I was not yet bitten by the running bug and so really didn’t care how fast or how far I ran. Jordana and I ran a lot together when we were in DC. I miss that now, but with each of us training for marathons and with three small kids requiring one of us to remain at home while the other runs, we rarely run together anymore. Such is life, n’est ce pas?

Meanwhile, we moved to suburban Maryland and had two kids. I entered a rut of running, doing my lunchtime work runs of between 5 and 6 miles, averaging between 25 and 30 miles a week. I never ran weekends. I did not race. But I was the “running guy” at work. Very quickly after starting at the FTC, my colleagues knew not to schedule meetings with me between noon and 1 — that was running time. Luckily there was a small cadre of runners at the FTC. We rarely ran to together but we sure talked a lot in the locker room before and after.

Next entry, I get bitten by two bugs....