I'm not much of a runner. Until the last few years, running was a necessary evil I had to do each summer to prepare for soccer in the fall. And running was the punishment meted out at practice. Running was never good or fun. I would spend hours each day mentally persuading myself to go running, and more often than not, I would find some pathetic excuse to get out of running.
Upon graduating college, I wanted to change my perspective of running. I wanted to like it, to do it everyday (or almost everyday). My intent was to stay in some semblance of athletic shape. I have a huge fear of becoming a blob-shaped person. Ugggh.
I knew to make this drastic change in my mentality, I'd have to get excited about running. So I thought "I'll run races". I knew I wouldn't be fast - speed has never been present in me, despite numerous "acceleration" training camps I attended. I just wanted to finish the race, keep going farther and farther distances. Maybe even a marathon one day.... I mean, all the pictures of people who run marathons show people in pretty good shape, right? (Fact I found out later: There are people who don't look like runners who can run. Far. And fast.) Plus, as a bonus, I thought I could slim down my huge soccer legs.
Well, four years later, I'm still trying to change my mentality towards running. I openly admit I haven't spent four years consistently on this - I've taken a LOT of time off exercising (bad!) So far, I've reached the point where I know running is good for me, I want to do, I even write up basic training plans, and I can run more than I thought....but I still don't like running and have to convince myself to do it. Oops.
It doesn't exactly help that my boyfriend Eric and his friends are all runners. Compared to them, I run at an elephantine pace and I run such meager distances. Of course, they don't say that, but hearing them talking about doing an 8 mile training run at 6:30 pace.....I know where I stand.
And it's incredibly silly, but I also want to run because I don't want to be left behind by Eric and his friends. I may not run as fast or as far, but I can run too. Perhaps going out for runs at the same time can become a tradition. We've done it before - we run the first quarter mile together, then Eric peels off for another 6 miles much faster than I could imagine while I plod along 2 more miles back to the apartment. I want to have activities we can do together and I hope that this - something so important to Eric - can be one we share.
Hmmm, I went off on a tangent, didn't I? I was supposed to be telling you about the race I ran this past weekend...
There's a huge marathon (and all it's associated shorter races) here in Cincy called the Flying Pig. It's a big deal and tons of people, native or out-of-towners, participate in it. A few months ago, my mom signed me up to do the 10k race with her, which is 6.2 miles. My mom does a combination of walking and jogging, whereas I normally try to run the entire distance. (Side note: I am so incredibly proud of my mom for being physically active and for doing these races. I don't care if she walks, hops, roller skates, whatever - I'm impressed she's doing anything and doing it consistently. I want to be like that when I get older!) I wrote out a training plan where I'd run 3 days a week for a month or two in advance. Okay, I copied the exact training plan from Women's Health magazine where you only have to run 3 days a week and you'll optimize your weight loss (intervals, hills, that's where it's at!). I had my plan. And then I didn't follow it at all. Oops. I actually don't think I ran more than twice in the month prior to the race. Oops again. I was screwed.
Here's why I was panicked: I have never run more than 5 miles at a time in my life. And I've only done that 3 times (2 Turkey Trots and one random race this spring with Eric's elite running team). The last time I ran 5 miles, I wanted to collapse around mile 3. So how am I, without any training, going to run 6.2 miles?????
Certain I was doomed to fail, I set two basic goals for myself for the race:
1) Run the entire time. Not fast, but just keep running.
2) Try to finish around an hour. That would mean I was running a slow but steady 10 minute mile pace.
I woke up at 5:45am the morning of the race, and left Dayton with my parents at 6:30am. I tried to sleep a little more in the car, but never really dozed off. Mom and I hopped out of the car at a corner near Great American Ballpark, where the start line was situated. With 20 minutes to go, we joined the long line for the row of Port-a-Lets. With 5 minutes to go, we left the Port-a-Lets and attached ourselves to the back of a rather large crowd at the start line. And then....we were off!
After a quarter mile, I dashed off from mom, running, so as to meet goals 1 and 2. We wove out of downtown Cincy, crossed a bridge into Newport, Kentucky, ran along the main street in Newport, then turned around to run along a parallel street closer to the river (at this point, we passed a Hooters restaurant where I overheard some dudes say "There should totally be a beer stop here!"). We crossed another bridge, but, instead of heading back to Cincy (like I thought we were), we entered Covington, Kentucky and ran through it. I think I ran my strongest here because of all the people out on the side of the road, cheering us and playing music from their cars. I felt, as I rarely do when running, good. We crossed a bridge back into Cincy and, on that bridge, I ran faster than a train for a few minutes! (The train was only going about 2 miles per hour, but I was still faster!!!!) Then we wandered through a part of downtown Cincy, past our start line, and looped back around to finish on the other side of Great American Ballpark. The last mile was hard for me. I kept setting small goals - catch that person in the yellow shirt, okay now catch the lady in the blue shorts. And on each of the hills on the course, I repeated in my head "crush that hill, crush that hill". I did NOT want to walk! I wanted to meet my goals. I kicked as hard as I could when I saw that "Finish Swine". And I crossed it, head down and chugging along, at 1 hour and 2 minutes! Woooohoooooo!!!!
It was the farthest I've ever run, and I did it! I even have a medal with a pig (turn it over to see its bum!) to prove it!
Now I need to get on my training plan.... I can run some more races up in Dayton to get participation points for Eric's elite team. And hopefully I can get into better shape. And maybe, just maybe, I can start to want to run :) It's gotta be a positive feedback loop, right?
I'm so proud of you!!! :)
ReplyDelete