As an adult I can honestly say up until a year or so ago I wasn’t a runner. I am pretty sure I’d never run in the past twenty years further than my driveway. But last year a good friend of mine and I decided we would set out and try to run a 5k. (Thanks Linda!) Again, I kind of had the attitude of why the heck not. I was already logging a lot of miles on the treadmill walking, so what could it hurt to speed things up a bit?
I downloaded an app to my iPhone called couch to 5k. It was made for people like me who had never run a day in their life. This program is great. It starts you off running for 60 seconds at a time and then you walk a little and then run another 60. It was simple enough. The next week the program gets you running for 90 seconds at a time. The next week gets you running for 3 minutes. It is a slow and steady way to start building up your endurance. Well, a few weeks into it I found myself at the gym on the treadmill getting ready to run 20 minutes straight. Again, considering I had never run in my life this made me nervous. But, somehow, with the right music on my iPod and a movie playing on the TV in front of my treadmill I made the 20 minute run – it wasn’t as bad as I thought it would be.
The next step was to take the running off of the treadmill to the street. To my shock and surprise it never occurred to me that it would be that much harder to run on an actual road. It was such a disappointment because I had to go back a few weeks in my training to get used to running outside. But, before long I was back up to running my three miles.
My friend and I ran our first 5K this last December. We had my brother come along, a more experienced runner, just in case we needed someone to come back and pick us up in case we didn’t make it.
I have done a second 5k since then and I am now working on training for a half marathon. I have found that if I just tell myself to keep running to stay in shape is really no motivation at all. It seems that if I have a race scheduled, a goal set, I am more than happy to keep up the running and make sure I am going to run the whole race.
There is something about the moments before the race starts that is very exciting. There is an energy there, everyone is stretching and getting ready, but everyone is happy and almost as excited as I was to be there. I can see how this becomes addicting.
Right now I am training to be able to run a half marathon. My goal is to be able to run the Disney Princess Half Marathon. What can be more fun than running through Disney World? Am I going to be able to make it 13 miles? I am going to - because like with my first 5k I am just going to start slow and steady and try not to collapse!
Feel weak, and when you feel weak, you feel like you wanna just give up.
But you gotta search within you, you gotta find that inner strength
And just pull that shit out of you and get that motivation to not give up
And not be a quitter, no matter how bad you wanna just fall flat on your face and collapse.
-Eminem
15 days and counting!