Math teacher draws inspiration from running

While many teachers feel exhausted after a long and stressful day of work and prefer to just go home and relax, math teacher Audrey Warmuth has a completely different way of recovering following her last class. Ever since she was a teenager, Warmuth has been running and has found the sport to be a source of relaxation.

“I always ran around as a kid and then I always did sports in high school,” said Warmuth. “I’ve essentially been running and jogging since the age of 13. It gives me time to just think about things.”

Warmuth trains anywhere from three-five times a week. Sometimes she trains with fellow teachers such as science teacher Kelly Nicholson.

“We both participated in San Jose Fit, which is a program where you go down to the Los Gatos track and meet once a week to do runs together,” said Warmuth. “Even though I sometimes run with the groups, I think I actually enjoy running by myself the best.”

She continues to challenge herself by participating in difficult events such as the Silicon Valley, San Francisco, Big Sur and Avenue of the Giants marathons. She has participated in one marathon a year for the last four years. One of her most memorable events was the Night and Day challenge in San Francisco, a seven-hour run of approximately 30 miles through the city.

“It’s an orienteering event, which means that you’re given a map with points that you have to go run to,” said Warmuth.

According to Warmuth, orienteering events give runners a couple of options on how they want to compete.

“You can either go to all the different points that are called controls and then the person who gets back first wins,” said Warmuth. “Or you can be given a set amount of time and then choose which controls you’re going to go to.”

Although Warmuth enjoys all running events, she enjoys orienteering events the most, particularly because they allow the entire family to get involved.

“It’s a lot of fun to do together because there are four people looking at the map and then there is usually a big discussion as to which route to take,” said Warmuth. “It’s nice that sometimes one person finds something and the other person doesn’t see it and we all kind of help each other out.”

However, Warmuth suffered a herniated disk after her last marathon and is easing back into training for marathons again.

“I’d like to get back into shape so that next spring I can start running more marathons,” said Warmuth. “I just haven’t gotten back into really starting to run the miles again, so I have to do that.”