My boyfriend, D.J., is an avid cyclist and a coach for the Team in Training cycle team (that’s him on the bike). He and I have been talking about how we can improve our fitness levels, and we decided it would be fun to run a 5k race together (the Carlsbad 5000 in about three weeks).

Well, it will be fun, but it’s also a personal challenge. D.J. is in amazing shape. He regularly rides 30, 40, 50 miles just for fun, and he’s coaching for another century ride (his 10th? 12th?), which is 100 miles and can take as much as 8 hours.

So, here I am … a fairly new runner with about 16 months of long-distance running experience. And I want to beat him. No, I want to REALLY beat him. Running is my only sport, and it’ll make me very unhappy if he kicks my rear in running. This morning, for the first time in several years, D.J. decided to take a little jog. He ended up running six miles with a very respectable time.

Most of the time I simply compete with myself to improve my running ability. I am positioned to shave a solid 1.5 hours off my marathon time, and I’m hoping to be able to sustain a sub-10-minute mile this season. I’m sub-11 right now, but that’s not good enough. And now, with this friendly challenge from D.J., I’m hungrier than ever for success. In fact, I convinced myself yesterday that I wasn’t going to do speed work with the track team today, but I was out there at 6 a.m. because D.J. teased me that he was going to win.

Although I’m not supposed to be, I’m competitive with writing as well. I’m a freelance copywriter, but I want to be the best writer I can be. A few nights ago in the bathtub, I was reading a novel that a writing colleague wrote. It’s good. It’s really good. And I want to write a novel. I want to get to the writing finish line before everyone else, and I feel like I’m getting quite a late start.

But just because I’m almost 40 doesn’t mean I’m almost retired. I have plenty of years to write what I want to write and work on getting more things published.