Running

So I could not fall asleep last night I had so many ideas swirling in my head for the first - well second – post. Though I realize that I am basically talking (er…typing?) to myself, there is still a lot I want to say. To save the painfulness that would be this post if I tried to get it all out at once, I decided on a game plan. I am a girl that likes a plan!! So here it is: Today I will write about running; Tomorrow I will write about lifting; The post after, I will write about yoga; And the post after that, I will write about food. Then I suppose a whiny post about work – by far my least favorite aspect of my life. I warn you (if you didn’t pick up on it from the first post) that there may be a yoga thread through all of this. Maybe – that is my hope anyway. But I will get to that in a few posts.

I also want to take this time to say that I am not concerned here with proper grammar. I write properly for a living and have no interest in expressing my thoughts through conventional punctuation and capitalization. That’s the deal.

So running. I run. I am not a good runner. I never ran in high school – I walked the mile. In college I started to run, because I wanted people to think I was a runner. So I was 225 pounds pretending to be a runner. This was painful and comical…and you know what happened? Many miles and many walk breaks later, I became a runner. Go figure. Then I stopped running my senior year of college – many excuses could be made here, but lets just say that I was not strong enough to do what was right for me. Three years ago, I started running again. I started with the Couch to 5K program (want to learn to run? Do this program!). I ran a few 5Ks. I ran a few 10Ks (give or take). I ran the worst 10 miler in history. I ran a few half marathons. And now here I am, finally finding who I really am as a runner.

I have recently gotten over distance guilt. I have plodded through mile after mile thinking that, to be a real runner, I had to run long distances. I like longer runs with friends – I do. I do not like running more than 8 miles at a time. After a big inner battle, I made the decision that I was going to stick to 5Ks and 10Ks and damn the distance running. This has been HUGE – I am a much happier runner. I only run 10-15 miles a week now and I feel less pressured to be fitting in a run all the time. And I still get to do long runs with friend and catch up! Yay!

I should say here that I am not a fast runner. I race, but I rarely place…and when I do, it is by some freak accident that only a few people showed up. If I come in third, be sure that only 4 people in my age group showed up. I am dead serious here. It has happened twice. I like to race though. In general, I am a lazy runner. I listen to books on tape and plod along trying not to get hit by cars. Racing forces me to speed up – that’s it. That is why I race. I am not sure why I run. Maybe we will figure that out together.