I am a runner now. In January, I never thought I would say that. It's been a slow journey to get here, but I'm glad to have made the effort. Let me briefly tell you my running story.
It started in January of this year, when I returned from a business trip and stepped on the scale to see the largest number I had ever seen. Moderately motivated into action by this, I resolved to start working out. O the naivete of the New Years' resolutions!
I decided to take on something I had never been able to do before - run. I had been ashamed for years that I couldn't even run a mile, and just chalked it up to not being "a runner." "I can do other things," I told people, but it was an excuse, because I didn't really even try to run.
So why pick running, if I hated it so much? I chose running mainly because I wanted to have a solid goal to progress towards - a specific achievement to attain - because the ambiguous idea of "losing weight" had never been enough motivation for me to stick with any exercise much past the first week.
When I began that year, I tried to run, just to see where I was. I signed up at the gym where I work, which has a quarter mile track behind it. I put on my old tennis shoes and headed out with trepidation to see where I stood - namely, just how bad I was at this.
I barely made it around the track once before giving up. It was that bad. Granted, I have never been a great runner in the past, but I used to be able to do better than that! I was quite dejected at the end of that workout. I needed a plan.
A few days later, I stumbled upon something: the Couch to 5k running plan, over at Cool Running. I read the name and thought, 'Couch, huh? I'm pretty much on the couch. This sounds just about right!' The program lays out a true beginner's running schedule - rather than some so-called beginner's schedules, which have you at a mile by week two! The first week starts with intervals of running (or easy jogging, if you like) that are only 60 seconds, followed by 90 seconds - a whole minute and a half - of walking to catch your breath.
Even I can run for one minute, I thought. No problem. So I bought myself a cheap digital watch for time, and started puffing my way around the track. It wasn't all that fun to start with, but I managed to actually DO what the schedule said the first two weeks, which was encouraging. So I kept slogging along, trying to at least run a bit more each day, even if I couldn't quite keep up with the suggested schedule after a week or two.
And something amazing started happening: I noticed myself getting better. It didn't happen within the first week, or even the second. It was closer to the end of the third, or the fourth week that I thought, 'It wasn't hard to run for 1 minute. Actually, that's kind of easy now. I wasn't even breathing hard!' I felt a tiny bit of pride that I had stuck with it, and was actually noticing a difference. And so it began.
That was seven months ago, and although I haven't progressed in a linear fashion, there has been gradual upward progress. Despite setbacks of knee pain and shin splints, even through the business trip for a month where I didn't have much opportunity to run, my steady progress has kept me on track and positive that I can do this.
Even though at this point, I've fallen completely off track with the suggested program, what I learned is that I DO have the determination to stick with this, make progress, and actually enjoy myself along the way. Those were the first lessons I needed to learn along my journey to become a runner.
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