Run Girl, RUN!

I love running. And by that I mean by choice. No chainsaw wielding maniac after me. No Godzilla like lizard on the loose that I must evade. No blob that has taken over my small town and is gobbling up everyone on its path. Nope….just running for the heck of it. 

Actually paying money to run with other people in organized events! Shelling out 150.00 a pair for shoes, and multiple pairs of them at that, to have the best care for my body as I run. Taking a class on my running watch, which could likely launch a 60s space program if in the hands of the right hacker, and meticulously tracking my breathing, cadence, distance, speed, elevation change after each run and my overall improvement each week and month as contrasted with the same period last year. The funny thing is…I just now have been able to do the 52 week comparison. I started running Aug 1 of last year in earnest. 

I was going to do one little 5K, which at the time seemed as insurmountable as Kilimanjaro to me, and now my shortest run each week is a 5K. But that one 5K, to honor a friend and prayer warrior with whom I had grown quite close, turned out to be the best decision for me I have ever made. I had tried yoga and Pilates, which I still love. The elliptical, which I credit with really helping increase my endurance initially, but was a BORING place along my journey and even tried biking. I’m a recreational bike rider. No desire to ever go as fast as a Prius around town on my bicycle. I don’t want to clip my shoes to my food pedal. Don’t want to be the bane of fellow drivers everywhere as I go in a pack with others on Wednesday nights and Saturday mornings. Nope, no interest. 

But running. Ahhhhhh, running. 

I actually feel like I missed out on what could have been such an awesome part of middle school and high school. I could have been on the track team and done so well. I would have benefited greatly from the coaching, camaraderie and regular physical exercise. My beloved Uncle Scott actually encouraged me to do the discus and shot put. He said I’d be great at it. He nudged me about it a few times and then gave up and for all I know, my own mother told him to stop because he just never mentioned it again. And it isn’t like I was on the fence about it. Never once occurred to me I could do it. That I could excel in a sport. Well, I did great in softball, but only because I could hit a home run and then not have to actually run the bases and could score a run. College could have been amazingly different with me running, even if I did not make the team, but had the recreational love of the time on the track and the road to share with others in a recreational league. But…I can’t spend my time looking back in things not done, so forward I go…and I go there at a run!

Now this is also not to say that the Olympic teams are rubbing their hands hoping I’ll pick an event to represent the US in for 2016, either. Nope. I’m slow by any standard, but I don’t care. I am 8 minutes a mile faster than I was last year. I have finished half marathons. PLURAL, half marathons. I did 100+ mile endurance runs over the course of a month in June and July and am working on another in August. I can go out and run 6 miles on my own in my little town and just enjoy the feel of my body as it leaves behind the stress of the world. I resolve work issues, home issues and think of creative solutions to stymie situations before they become issues. I admire those that go past me as if I am standing on the road at a stand still and I high 5 runners that look like they are just about to croak when they are coming up a hill I am headed down…and consequently I get a lot of high 5s back when I am on the return…even if it is not someone I saw earlier, but it’s just that sense of community that is there with runners. Even if we never meet in conversation, we are sharing the road, sharing the joy, sharing the love of it all. 

Similar to when I was pregnant with my two gargantuan babies and heard horror story after horror story of how the story teller’s next door neighbor sister in law’s mother’s pastor’s wife younger brother’s who was a cousin twice removed to the dog walker the next town over had to have a cesarean from clavicle to knee to get the baby out and was never quite right after that….people almost revel in their tales of why they don’t run any longer. I had one (well-meaning I am sure) man whip out photos, COLOR PHOTOS, from his total knee replacement and let me tell you, if I had had food in me, it would have been ON HIM pretty darn fast. Egad!  So I have learned to try and keep it to myself. 

I don’t evangelize the way I did at the peak of my training for my first half and the first month or so after that accomplishment. But, to a degree those horror stories do serve a purpose. I realize that not everyone can run until the day they take up residence on the other side of the grass. I realize that I might one day just say “Enough” and be done for whatever reason. And so I keep my ears and mind open to other things that will fulfill me in the way running does, help me be lean in the way running does and frankly, provides the amazing level of therapy and daily problem solving that running does. 

But for now…run, I shall! 

Run girl…run!