10K in Austin

Me and a bunch of other buddies and students from Koinonia and Gracepoint Fellowship Church decided to run the Austin 10K! The 5th largest 10K in the nation! Largest in terms of the number of people who sign up and participate every year. Can you believe people voluntary sign-up for something like this? But yes, people do. I scanned the runners who were around me right before the race started and to my surprise, many of them actually looked excited and happy. It’s one of the mysteries of life. =) On a grim, cold Sunday morning, I along with others woke up at 6:30am asking myself “What is life? What am I doing waking up so early to run 6.2 miles?!” It was a motley crew of people all with different motivations – some were in it for personal glorification, some were in it to take a nice leisurely walk (her initials are LC), some were bullied into it, some were jocks who didn’t think much of 6.2 miles, some were in it for the experience, and then there were some who just weren’t quite sure why they were there. I think I fell in with the latter group of people. Unfortunately, I didn’t have much time to train for this, but luckily, I didn’t go into cardiac arrest. My hope was to just keep running and not stop to walk. While others wanted to beat an old record time of theirs, I just wanted to keep running and finish the race. It wasn't much of a goal but I am glad I was able to accomplish it. =) I’m a terrible runner, but at the finish line, I thought to myself how it wasn’t all that bad. Even though my time was 1 hour and 15 minutes and I came in last out of our entire group, it felt good doing something that was challenging and intimidating for me. Hopefully, being part of 10K would have built in me just a little bit more willingness and courage to confront other kinds of challenges that I know I will face later on in life. Plus, the race did have its highlights like having strangers cheer for me and being able to drink a cup of water and then throw it violently down onto the ground (I always wanted to do that). But no, I don’t think I will ever be in a position to run a marathon. I will, however, run next year's 10K and hopefully more gals will be willing to join in on the fun and pain!