As I’ve mentioned here before, I don’t usually need much structure around exercising. I love running, lifting, and playing sports with friends, but I’m generally more inclined to just throw shoes on and go running, or grab someone and play tennis, than sign up for anything organized.

Still, I do run the occasional race, triathlon, or other odd event now and then…like last Friday. Steve and I ran the 10k at the Palo Alto Moonlight Run.

We had Friday dinner early, right before the race, so we were unfortunately full of chips, chimichangas, and margaritas. What’s more, neither of us trained much. Steve doesn’t need to – a 10k run is a light day for him – but it’s definitely farther than my average run, and I don’t even run every day.

Still, we pushed hard, just to see what we could do, and we managed to finish in under 47 minutes. That put us at roughly 7:30 mile pace, which I was more than happy with. It’s also nice to have a benchmark like this, since I track progress and measure performance so rarely.

I don’t know that I’ll run races any more than I do now, but they’re definitely fun every now and then. Thanks, Steve!