TJ is my running partner. We don’t actually run together much, but he is my knowledge base for running. He does the research and I put into action the things that I can. RS is also a running partner, but has had some troubles with injuries lately so he is trying to get his feet under him again.

TJ and I just ran our 5th 5K together. It was a great day. It was in the 60’s and overcast at 7:15am when the gun went off. Just for the record, TJ is in his 20’s and I am in my early 50’s, but we have been running the same amount of time. TJ is a natural runner as far as I can tell. He ran his first 5K in “gorilla glued” work sneakers that had holes all through them. That was in April 2011. He finished in 22:45 and won his age group. Not bad for just running 3 weeks and not every day. I finished in 32 minutes and was just glad to survive.

Last Saturday we ran in the 5th 5K of our year. TJ finished 2nd overall in a photo finish with the 3rd place finisher. TJ was probably 20 yards behind the 3rd place runner and passed both the 3rd and the 2nd in the last 100 yards – WOW. I ran my best 5K thus far. I finished in 22:10 and got 3rd in my age group and 22nd overall. Oh, did I mention there were 690 people in the race? My goal was to finish under 22:00 and I came close. Actually I pushed it a bit too hard as I needed some attention from paramedics after I finished. I needed about 15 minutes to get my breath back and then I was fine.

RS came along to cheer us on as did my other kids and my lovely wife of 26 years. On the video that RS took of me at the finish I can hear my family cheering me on, but in the race I couldn’t hear anything because of the shape I was in.

Now we begin training for the our first half marathon on February 16th. This will be our first race over a 5K. I have no goal, but TJ wants to finish in 1:30:00. I will meet him at the finish line probably 30 minutes after he finishes.