To some it's an amazing feat, to others it's the ordinary, to me it is somewhere in between.
I started "running" when I was 16 and a Junior in High School. A lot of my friends did track, so it was a great way for me to socialize after school. On my first day of practice I couldn't run the length of the soccer field without stopping to walk. I had never been forced to run, I had never been encouraged to run and I never wanted to run. So that first day when I was faced with running, I remember thinking "why am I doing this???" I thought that soccer field was going to be the hardest part of my day... then I had to figure out what my "events" were going to be. What do you sign up for in Track & Field when you aren't fast, you don't have endurance and you aren't strong?? Most people would say, you should sit in the bleachers and just watch. But I didn't. I remember one of the Coaches (Coach Powell) working it out with me. I was going to do the 400m and also work on the 800m and long jump. These were, theoretically, things I could work on and get better through the season.
Coach Powell worked with the distance runners and I remember training with them. I remember spending a lot of that first month walking with my head down because I was so embarassed. Slowly but surely, I started to improve. I also started to notice really weird things.... for one I was getting itty bitty leg muscles, but more noticeably I was getting bruises all up and down the insides of my calves. I remember bringing it up to Coach one day and he said he'd keep an eye on my form to see if he could figure out why. About 20 minutes into the work out, he called me over, chuckling. I'll never forget him explaining to me, through chuckles, that I was bruised because I was kicking myself. Yep. Focused on moving forward, I wasn't paying attention to my weak ankles and was kicking myself. Awesome. Just another thing for me to work on.
By the end of that track season I was able to run over a mile without stopping, not moving fast, but at least I was moving continuously.
That summer I worked on my running by myself and with a friend of my parents. At the end of the summer, I was doing the impossible-- I could run 5 miles without stopping. I wasn't kicking myself. I was rarely tripping on my own two feet. I had found my sport. And even now, 17 years later, I still credit Coach Powell for my dedication to a sport that I'm not good at, but that I do. Because I can.
Yesterday, during my 13.1 miles of agony, I spent a lot of time thinking about running. It's an awful activity that is a lot of impact on my aging joints. I'm not built like a runner-- I'm short, with a small gait and I'm overweight. I'm not graceful or fast or even good. But when I hit the trail, the track or the treadmill it's a time where I can really push myself past my comfort zone. When my body is saying "stop, you can't do this" or "you should stop, you haven't trained for this", my mind says "just keep putting one foot in front of the other." So I do. One foot in front of the other-- sometimes running, sometimes jogging, sometimes walking (I did a lot of that yesterday), but always moving.
Running is hard. Running is uncomfortable. Running is boring. But running reminds me of the first time I started to believe myself-- back on that dirt track, in my adidas wind pants, with bruised calves.
Now that I'm older though, I've become a lazy runner. See, I know I can go far mentally so I've stopped doing my homework. I've stopped training, at that is where the joy is. Race day is ok, but it's overcrowded, chaotic and makes me nervous. Training is where I find myself pushing harder, testing limits and making improvements.
I completed two half marathons this year and did MAYBE 10 days of actual running training. Not acceptable. So I have drafted a training plan and it begins this week. It's time for me to fall back in love with the process so that I can find the passion I once had. And maybe I'll find some speed in my old age... or maybe just some more stitches. Either way, it'll be something!
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