A new beginning

Hello internet! I spend so much of my time perusing other running blogs, science blogs, and personal style blogs that I thought "Hey, why not try to slap that all together?" so here we are. I plan to use this as a way to catalogue my progress with running, my attempts at developing a sense of style and my love of all things nerdy. I'm not completely sure of the exact direction I want this to go, but I'm sure that will become more clear as this continues.

A bit of history on my running first: I never considered myself athletic whatsoever until college. As a mandatory requirement we had to take a gym course. I immediately looked for the easiest one I could get into which was fitness walking (yes, that is a course at my college, and it fills up fast). I don't remember much about the course other than walking really quickly around the intramural fields and feeling very embarrassed when the students in the run conditioning course blazed past us. Every time the class was over I had built up so much energy from not running, that I would go to the track and run until I actually felt like I got a work out in. That was maybe a mile. But after doing that for a semester I had built up a bit of stamina.

I then joined the club rowing team that many of my friends were on because it seemed so fun and social. Many of our land practices were various running exercises. The 'dorm run' where we had to run to 9 dorms on campus and back, reporting the building number to our coach in between. Pyramid track work outs we did with a partner that became so competitive we were 'uninvited' by the gym as our cheering scared other gym members. Long runs around campus when the streets were still dark and quiet. It was during these long rungs that I realized I wasn't half bad and regularly finished second or third out of the girls team.

After college I kept up with running in graduate school as a way to exercise and entered various 5Ks, a 10K, and three Krispy Kreme Challenges (not really a race, but more of a disgusting college experience). Last year I ran my first half marathon, and it was a disaster - but I'm planning on redeeming myself this year. After a bit of a break from running, I've gotten back into it and am training for a 5K.

My PRs are certainly nothing impressive, but I have won two 5K awards (honestly due to very little competition, but hey, winning is winning).

Road

• 5K - 26:01 (2011 Cary Road Race. First in my age group. Out of 4)
• 10K - 1:00:42 (2011 Old Reliable 10K)
• 13.1 - 2:17:34 (2013 Kansas Half Marathon)

Trail

• 5K - 33:37 (2013 Pi Day 5K. First female, third overall. Again, very little competition)
• 10K - 1:22:55 (2013 North Shore Trail Run, a very very technical course)

Yeah, so there is LOTS of room for improvement. We'll see where this year takes me.

I also am pretty confident my writing skills are only of the "the reaction was neutralized with 1M HCl, then extracted with EtOAc" variety - so I apologize in advance.