For 30 of the 31 years of my life, I was not a runner. And by saying I was not a runner, I mean I actively spoke against it, often. I thought runners were probably the best and strongest people in the world, but I looked at them in amused awe. Joe has been a runner his whole life, and I always laughed at him when he would take time out of his day when he could be reading or watching TV to go outside, in the heat or cold and make his heart beat so fast it felt like he couldn’t get a breath. (Or maybe that was just me.)
The benefits were very clear to me, but they were not, and would never be FOR me. That much was clear. I hated running, and I was bad at it. Once in my whole life I had run a mile and in the middle of it I had to stop and walk for a while, and still at the end had concerned friends coming up to me and asking if I was ok because I looked like fainting.
After one, partially run mile.
It wasn’t just something I didn’t like. It became part of who I was; a Not Runner. When it became clear that I needed something to keep my body strong after children, I started yoga to avoid running. (I still love yoga.) And about 2 years after beginning yoga it became even more clear that I needed some cardio in my life, and for a while I made some running jokes, and then I talked about how much I did to avoid it, and then, one day, I woke up one morning face to face with a possible me, the Running Me. The person I always said I wasn’t.
I don’t know if other people wake up to different versions of themselves, but I suspect that it is not just a me problem, that it is not just me who comes to a place in their lives and realizes that the next step is to become what they have always said they weren’t.
One might say, it’s part of growth. But so often it can look like giving up, at least when we’re in it, anyway. Because people know us as the people we say we are, and people knew me as the one who didn’t run. Oh, I was other things too, to other people, and especially to myself. But, even so, moving on from that person that I had said I was felt a little like giving up on myself, and some people talked to me about it like that too. “What! You’re running! I’m not even sure who you are!” They meant it well, and it was justified based on my previous strongly worded comments about it. But it felt like that on some level they also thought that I was giving up on something, on some important part of who I was.
As if change isn’t hard enough, before us and the people around feel like we need to hold ourselves to the standard our old selves.
But faced with the new version of myself, with the road in front of me clear and plain (pun intended) I started this new life of running very simply. Ten minutes, three times a week. That’s it. It sounds like nothing, but frankly, right at the beginning, that was almost too much. My ten minute sessions were really more like fast walks, and ended about half a mile to three quarters of a mile distance. (Which, if you’re keeping track is a 15 or 20 minute mile. I’m relatively sure that my four year old can walk a 15 minute mile.)
As the months have gone by, I haven’t pushed anything except the actual getting the runs done. It took me a month to get up to 15 minutes running. And today, a year later, I just finished my 6thmile of the week, on the way to my new normal, 9 miles a week. Some weeks I get in 7 miles, sometimes only 6. But the majority of my weeks these past couple of months have been 9 mile weeks. Some mornings, when it’s cooler and the Florida summer hasn’t quite crept in yet, I can do the 3 mile loop around the lake in 28 or 29 minutes. Nine minute miles.
When I’ve been up three times the night before it’s still more like 11 minute miles. When I have no time and need to just get in one mile quick, I finally two weeks ago ran a seven and a half single mile.
Look, these aren’t world class running numbers. They’re barely running numbers at all. An eleven minute mile is about equivalent to a fast walk. I know this. I also know that for me, this is far beyond anything I thought I would ever do. It’s beyond anything I said I would ever do.
Nine miles a week? The grown up version of the girl who nearly fainted after one?
Look, reinventing ourselves is impossible most times. But there are those few times when instead of being impossible, it’s just hard.
I’ve moved across the world and switched life styles and had two children, but here’s to one year of a different kind of hard. The kind of choosing to do the thing I always said I wasn’t.
Here’s to a different kind of reinvention.
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