Walking a 5k
culture  

Walking a 5k

By Gloria

Back in high school, we ran 2.5 miles every other day, and the whole school ran a 5k at the end of every year as our final fitness test. Keeping up with running in college is a little harder. First term, I ran every morning with two of my friends, waking up at a bright and early 7:30 a.m. I also occasionally ran in the evenings/middle of the night with Avery Running Group. Second term, I ran very occasionally (due to an injury), and same for third term. Can you see the negative trend here? When I saw the emails about the Caltech Beaver 5k, an event put on by Caltech’s health education advisory league (HEAL), and Catalina Community Associates (CCA), I thought it would be a great way to get back into running. Then I saw that walking was also an option, and decided to do that instead.

My roommate and I woke up at 9:30 a.m. this morning, rubbed the sleep out of our eyes, put on our running gear, had some muffins and berries from open kitchen, and headed to Beckman Lawn. There was food, water, and runners galore. Volunteers from HEAL/CCA and from the Caltech student populace were handing out numbers and generally being cool cats:

There were quite a few Rudds in attendance, including fellow blogger Vasant, who is helping Krishnan do push-ups here:

And then Chloe, Katie, and me!

We gathered at the cute start line, and at 10:30 a.m., sped off.

Or in my and Chloe’s case, power walked off. It turned out not many people were there to power walk. It also turns out Chloe power walks very quickly, so I ended up doing a bouncy jog to keep up with her. The course looped through campus twice, and though we weren’t running, we were still pretty sweaty from the mid-morning sun. We made it in 40 minutes, and decided to run it next time.

Registration for the race was free, but HEAL suggested donating $5 to one of several mental health organizations, which I thought was really cool. It’s rare that you see such a big group of Caltech community members gathered to exercise together this “early” on a weekend but HEAL made it happen.

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