Hi, my name is Ken Cormier, and sometimes I wonder how I became a distance runner. Since I was asked to write this blog, I guess I'm not the only one who is curious. There are at least two of us, and I hope a few more.

My running addiction more or less started when I went out for track my freshmen year at Douglas High School. My whole life I was a baseball and soccer player -- imagine playing a sport with a ball -- but decided to go out for the track team because I was curious and I always thought track was a pretty cool sport. I didn't start out with the distance corps, but rather with the intermediate hurdlers. I really enjoyed running track because of all the sports I did, it definitely had the best atmosphere in which to work. I looked forward to track practice everyday. After track season ended I decided to run with the distance team over the summer to get in shape so that when track rolled around again I would be able to reach my goal, qualify for state in the 300-meter hurdles, a feat that I missed my freshman year at Regionals. Three went to States. I was fourth.

Over the summer I ran three to four times a week with the cross country team, but I really didn’t become passionate about the sport until I went to the Anasazi training camp in Flagstaff, AZ. I was really lucky to get there. I wasn’t going to go because I was working as a lifeguard and I really just didn’t care, but the day before the camp started cross country coach David Bond called me and told my one of the girls who was supposed to go came down with strep throat and I could go to this camp for free because all of the fees had been paid. So there I was at camp for a week in beautiful, cool Flagstaff. It was so different than Douglas, a very hot place on the Mexican border, two hours southeast of Tucson. The most amazing part to me was how all these runners really loved this sport, how they enjoyed training, all they did was talk about running and it was great! Even though through most of the runs I was dying and just trying to hang on and not be the one that the pack has to slow down for, I really found pleasure in running. It became more then just something to do; it became something I wanted to do.

Okay, to be truthful, it became my obsessive passion. From that time on I knew I was going to be a runner. I didn’t know were I was going, I didn’t know how far it would take me, but I wasn't worried about any of that. I simply decided to run.