Tuesday, November 8, 2011

A post about.....running?

I'm sure anyone who knows me at all saw the title of this post and immediately wondered if they'd accidentally landed on the wrong blog.

Nope, guys, it's still me. And yes, I'm writing about.....running.


Let me back up a little bit and explain my history with running. As far back as I can remember, I have always always hated running. I was slow in elementary school when we had to run "the mile" in P.E. I was still slow in middle school, despite desperately wanting to be seen as athletic and a tomboy (anyone remember those shirts that said "____ is life, the rest is just details"? Well, I owned one honoring the great sport of basketball. ha.) Finally, in high school, I accepted that I would never be athletic and met my physical education requirements through marching band practice. Not much changed in college (where I never set foot in Dartmouth's brand new gym), or law school (where I paid membership fees at 24 Hour Fitness for a year without going to the gym), or Hawaii (where I briefly attended boot camp but then quit before finishing sessions I'd paid for). Suffice it to say, I HATE running.

In the last few weeks, though, running has been on my mind a lot. This past weekend everyone was talking about the NYC marathon, and tons of facebook friends posted their times/pictures of them running/people they cheered on, etc. It got me thinking, why am I so incapable of doing this?? Since being back home, I've run on the treadmill at the gym my parents attend a few times, and done a handful of laps around the neighborhood, but never more than like 2 miles. I was talking to someone last night who told me that I shouldn't beat myself up for it because it takes like a year to be any good at running. While I recognize that it takes a level of commitment to be good at anything, especially physical activity, I just can't understand why I'm so incapable of committing to it.

My friend T recently committed herself to a 30 day yoga challenge. I'm not going to do anything of the sort with regards to running, but I will say this. I want to be able to run 3 miles. Yes. Sometime in the near future I would like to be able to say that I can run - no, not 26.2 miles, or 13.1 miles, but - 3 miles.

There we go people - I'm posting it here to keep me honest. And any and all words of encouragement, or better yet, HELP on how I can achieve this would be much appreciated.

1 comment:

Julie said...

Good luck!!! It gets easier as you go along. If you stick to it, I think you can accomplish the job in less than a month! Personally, I like to make someone go with me, to hold me accountable so I don't give up after the first mile.