Running with Crohn’s: Attempt to break my 10K PR

If you’ve talked with runners, you may have heard them discuss a term called “PR”.  Usually they speak of a PR excitedly.  PR stands for “Personal Record” and it means the fastest you’ve ever run a particular race.

Runners use their PRs as status symbol, record of their improvement, and usually as a goal to try to break.  When you start running, every new distance you run sets a new PR.  As your fitness improves, you’ll often break your old PRs and set new ones.

When I was young (in my late teens and early twenties), I played soccer and swam competitively.  Just for fun, we would run 5K or 10K races and do pretty well.  In that period, I believe I ran a 23 or 24 minute 5K and a 56 min 10K.

Since that time, I haven’t done any running and very little physical activity at all.  I only started seriously training for running in the fall of 2011.  I have REALLY wanted to beat my 22-year old PR times for these distances.  I came close on one 5K, running it in 25 minutes at the Energy2Action "Burn It Off".  However, I haven’t attempted to break my 10K time.  This weekend, I will make that attempt at the USAF Marathon 10K.

Looking for the “Silver lining”

On January 1^st 2013, I registered to run the USAF Marathon (read more about it at the USAF Marathon Home Page ).  However, the problems I encountered this year interrupted my training enough that I feel I couldn’t complete the race.  Therefore, I registered to run the 10K instead.  I also modified my training a bit to work on increased speed at shorter distances.

Anyway, I tried to turn the negative of dropping out of the Marathon into a positive thing by attempting to break my 10K PR on 9/21/2013.  I honestly think that I will not break that PR, however, I do think it will be close.  I also think I’ll be happy with any time under 1 hour.

2011      USAF Marathon 5K

2012      USAF Marathon half marathon

2013      USAF Marathon (planned full, actual 10K)

USAF Half Marathon, 2012

Wish me luck, I really want to kick my 22-year old ass this weekend!!!