How I Lost My Virginity

Over in a Flash, But Worth It

It was a cool Sat­ur­day morn­ing in the woods in the appro­pri­ately named town of Wood­side. I was excited, but not overly – I had been prac­tic­ing and train­ing for this moment for a long, long time. In a way, I had been wait­ing for this day ever since I was a teenager. I spent count­less days dream­ing of how amaz­ing it would feel. Espe­cially at the end, after all of my hard work paid off.

On Decem­ber 5 it finally hap­pened. I lost my rac­ing vir­gin­ity. I ran my first ever race. A 10k trail race.

The event was not only a momen­tous occa­sion because it was my first, it was a sig­nif­i­cant mile­stone in my recov­ery. Four months prior to race day, after spend­ing three months in bed in a lot of pain, I had back surgery for a her­ni­ated disc. The rup­tured disc had been press­ing against my sci­atic nerve, ren­der­ing it unus­able (to this day my left calf is weak, but it’s get­ting bet­ter every day). Months of phys­i­cal ther­apy and 5 days a week of walk­ing increas­ing amount of miles had brought me a long way.

I won’t bore you with a turn-by-turn analy­sis and recap of the race. I will say, though, that it was a lot of fun. I ran uphill more than I thought I would, no doubt due to the extra adren­a­line from run­ning with other peo­ple (I usu­ally ran the course solo). I did keep my heart rate from max­ing out, which was a goal of mine (I have a long his­tory of over­do­ing it and then suf­fer­ing for it).

It really helped hav­ing run the course sev­eral times prior to race day. I knew which hills were tough, and which ones I could run. I also knew when the trail turned down­hill for good, allow­ing me to pace myself accord­ingly. All of this helped me come in 20 min­utes sooner than my goal time with a pace almost 4 min­utes faster than I had hoped for!

Come to think of it, the race was rather like sex. A gen­tle begin­ning fol­lowed by a steep climb, then I came rush­ing down the hill in a manic crescendo to the fin­ish line. But in this case, fin­ish­ing pre­ma­turely was a good thing!

What was your first?