This article is different than all the others I’ve written so far on this site. I’m just going to open up and talk about myself for a little bit to give you a peek into my life and my way of thinking.

On Saturday, August 27, 2011, I had the privilege of running a relay race with five of my coworkers from a company called Fishbowl. I’m a copywriter there, and I run three blogs all talking about inventory management software. I try to make that topic, which could be boring, into something as interesting as all my movie reviews on this site. I’ve written nearly 300 posts about inventory software so far and I’m not even close to running out of ideas yet, so I think I’m doing pretty well.

Who Am I Running for?

Anyway, the relay race was amazing. It’s called the Rivalry Relay and it’s supposed to be between Brigham Young University fans and University of Utah fans. I’m not really partial to either, to tell you the truth. I attended BYU for my last two years of college after graduating from a community college in Washington State, but I’ve never been particularly attached to it. I never even attended a single football game or other sporting event while I was there.

So I wasn’t running for BYU or against it. I was just running to see how well I could do. It’s been a while since I really pushed myself on a run. The last time I did that was in 2008 when I ran a half-marathon with my sister, and I ended up unable to move without being in excruciating pain for two days afterward. I didn’t want to ever even think of running that long a distance again, but, like a mother and pregnancy, I forgot about the pain over time and I signed up to run this relay race a few months ago.

What I Love

I love running. Not that I’m the best runner who ever lived, but I just love it. I’ve done it ever since I was a kid. I ran around my house when I was 12 so many times I started to form a little trail through the backyard. Luckily, my parents didn’t have to worry about me ruining their landscaping for too long because I joined the Track team and the Cross Country team when I got a little older. I never placed too high in any events, but I loved the chance these sports gave me to make friends and spend time with people. My best time for the 5K race was 18:30 and my best time for the mile run was 5:28. So I thought I was pretty fast.

At the Relay

I had a lot of fun at the relay. My team and I ran from U of U in Salt Lake City to just south of BYU in Provo, Utah in 10 hours and 32 minutes. I was running close to seven-minute miles, but I didn’t realize I was going that fast. For my first leg, which was about 3.7 miles, I started out several minutes behind a few other teams, but I wound up catching up to them and beating them by several minutes while going up a steep hillside. That was the first time in years that I began to realize how fast I can be.

My team had fallen behind another team again by the time it was my turn to run again, so I had my work cut out for me to take the lead again. And I did. I beat the opponent by several minutes. I was mainly trying to run as fast I could without worrying about what other people were doing, but I liked being able to see the fruits of my efforts as I ran. My team made some mistakes and had some struggles, but we performed much better than any of us thought possible at first. We ended up 34^th out of 81 teams, and we beat all the teams in our time bracket. Plus, another Fishbowl team finished first place overall! That was a great race.

Back to Work

So the reason I don’t have a movie review for you this week is because I was busy getting ready to run and then recovering from that long run. But I’ll get back to work now. I have some awesome stuff planned that I can’t wait to share next week. Hint: I hope you like little-known Star Wars parodies.

This is the Deja Reviewer bidding you farewell until we meet again.