geek girl runner

My name is Kris Howard and I'm 32-year-old American-Australian living in Sydney, Australia. I've been running off and on for several years, mostly to try to lose weight. I ran my first 5K in 2002 in something like 45 minutes. I didn't get serious until 2006, when I ran four races (Mother's Day Classic 8K, City 2 Surf 14K, Daily Telegraph BridgeRun 9K, Bridge to Bridge 10K) and lost nearly fifty pounds on Weight Watchers. Unfortunately I spent a lot of 2007 battling chronic stomach pain, and I eventually put on about thirty of the pounds I lost. I only ran two races (City 2 Surf, Bridge Run) that year. In 2008 I got decided to train for a half-marathon, and I ended up running six races (Mother's Day Classic, Sydney Half-Marathon, City 2 Surf (third in a row!), Bridge Run, Melbourne Half-Marathon, Tough Bloke Challenge). I continued to run in 2009 and managed five races (Mother's Day Classic, Bay Run 2009, City 2 Surf (fourth in a row!), Rebel Sport Run4Fun, and Sri Chinmoy 7K). At the end of 2009, I made the transition to forefoot running which is helping with recurring injuries. My main goal for 2010 is to run 1000km in the calendar year. My first race of the year was the Mother's Day Classic 8K, followed closely by the Sydney Half-Marathon (which I started strongly but ended up with a DNF after 12.5km). I'm currently battling an overuse injury in my right foot, so further racing is on hold until I get that fixed.

You can learn a lot more about me over on my personal blog. In fact, the posts on geekgirlrunner are just a filtered list of all the running posts from over at web-goddess. So if it seems a bit disjointed at times, head over to web-goddess to get the whole story!