How it got started

I've always loved running for fun, and after I broke my mountain bike in a small crash last fall I started trail running so I could fall down at lower speeds. I'd worked up to running for an hour or two at a time pretty easily and thought about doing the half at the Austin Marathon in February. Sadly I'd missed the deadline and blew it off, then got busy in the spring and lost all of what a serious runner would call "form". When I tried to go right back to running 5 miles at a time my hip would hurt so I had to start over from nothing. Now I've got some new shoes and carefully worked back to running a solid 3 miles twice a week with no issues and thanks to the generous 7-hour time limit for Austin (a 16 minute/mile pace!), I'm pretty sure just about anybody could finish.