The Walking John vs. Broad Street : Round 1

Happy Tuesday everyone!

Hope your day is going well today. It’s been an up and down week for me thus far. Saturday, as most of you have seen by the pictures, I participated in the Broad Street Run 10 miler in Philly on Sunday. I’ll get back to that in a bit, but the following morning, I was subjected to a triple tooth extraction. Ugh, not fun to say the least. So, I’m laying around here recovering and deciding to do some blogging.

It’s been awhile since have written to you guys. A lot has changed since we last spoke. I spent the month of March either on vacation or ill so I had little time and or energy to get serious running in. Conversely, during April, I had to reteach myself how to run outside. I just assumed that it would be easy to fully transition from one to the other, but boy was I wrong. So, a month before the big 10 mile race when I ran outside and had barely enough energy to do a 5K’s worth of length, I knew I had to build all that back up again. I believe I had been spoiled with my quick treadmill times and was frustrated when it wasn’t as quick outside. Thanks to a couple good friends’ advice, I changed my overall thinking and went for distance over pace and found myself just rolling along after a few runs. It was a huge boost for me since I took to the pavement on the 3rd and ran my heart out those 10 miles and all in a sub 2 hour time (1:56:15 to be exact).

If you remember my post about a year ago when I stated that I was ready to put my hat into the ring and run this race, you would know why this race was so important to me. I was beyond nervous that day. I had to wake up early to make sure I didn’t miss the start of the race. I even was lucky to get a pre run in hustling for the trolley since I fell behind getting ready in the morning. It was a surreal moment loading onto the subway squashed together like sardines and then emerging onto the busy streets of North Philly. I was tempted to take a picture of the whole scene, the starting line, endless amount of runners stretching and prepping for the long road ahead of them, and just the overall atmosphere, but I did not want to be “that guy”. I already took a number of pre and post race selfies and of the medal that I got for runner and don’t worry I’ll probably post them later in the post.

The running part was probably my favorite part of the whole experience. Being beside all these other runners traversing through the streets of Philadelphia. Residents leaning outside their windows and sitting on their steps cheering and yelling we all ran past complete with hundreds of spectators with signs and bands playing. It really was more than I was expecting. I still couldn’t believe I was actually doing it. It really got me thinking about all the people and things in my life that helped get me to where I am now, but that’s a topic for another post soon. I was able to do some self exploration and even though, I nearly felt like giving up around mile 6, I pressed on.

When the Mile 9 marker flew past me, I knew I had it in me to finish this thing. It wasn’t easy and it was completely exhausting, but I knew this last mile was going to be my strongest. I buckled down and busted it the remainder of the way.

Soon, the finish line.

I was finished.

I had completed the event that I had been counting down to for almost a year. 

An event that just several years ago would have been in my wildest dreams to complete and all in a speedy sub 2 hour time.

Oh how far we’ve come.

Round 2 in 2016, anyone?

Bring it.

Validation achieved.