| Last Saturday I left to participate in my first 10K race. It was lightly snowing, 30 degrees and seemed like a perfect day for a 6.2 mile run. As I began the race I wondered why in the world I ever decided to do this, let alone what gave me the stupid idea I could pull this off. Regardless, the gun went off and I started out.
For those of you that are runners, you'll agree that the first mile is where you have a struggle just to get into the groove of things. The cold was making this even more of a struggle as I ran down this familiar road littered with ugly metal buildings. Funny though, I couldn't figure out why I had been on this road before until I turned a corner and there, up on the hill, shining like a monument of inspiration, was a past TCA Building Award winner. I had to laugh as I found myself picking up my step a bit. There are only a few of us that would get a charge from a Tilt-Up building.
Well, I marched on, literally thinking about all the Tilt-Up buildings I could think of that have been award winners in the past. I tried to name off the buildings from the awards programs for the last five years that I had been involved in -- a distracting mental game that took my mind off the run. Before I knew it, I hit the 3.1 mile point and it was time to turn around and head back. And, I knew if I could just make it back to that building that was now my inspiration, I would be able to pull this off. In what seemed a flash of a moment, I was there and actually caught myself smiling as I thought about how I had spent the last two miles comparing the attributes of Tilt-Up to the tin sheds all around it. I picked up my pace and brought myself in -- coming in 5th in my age group for a time of 53 minutes, 54 seconds. No record breaker, but still something to be proud of for my first 10k.
As I crossed the finish line and got a hug from my boyfriend, I told him how Tilt-Up had inspired me along the way. "Only you...." he said. He doesn't understand...but then again, he still specs brick. |
