From the couch...

You know those people who love to run? Like the ones who can run five miles with ease or the ones who talk about the joys of getting a runners high?

Yeah. I am NOT one of those people.

I have always hated running, well at least for as long as I can remember. I have never experienced the high or the rush of energy that some people get from the activity. I think I have experienced the opposite. On quite a few occasions I was thought that I was going to have a runners die.

I also know people who always want to do something and never do it. You know, the person who wants to take a trip to some place and talks about it for ten years, but somehow never musters up what it takes to go, be it courage, money, or any other sort of thing.

Even me, I find that in myself. There are things I always say I want to do, but I never actually get up and do them. Like sign language for example. I have probably been saying for five years now that I would like to learn sign language. And have I made one concerted effort towards that desire? No.

At the same time, I decided a few years back that I did not want to be a person who always talks about doing something and never actually does it. Granted, sign language and a few other things are still hanging in the ballot, but as a whole, I want to be the kind of person who pursues my desires.

Now running, despite my strong loath of it, has been something that I have always wanted to do. I do not think I had the desire to in high school because I cannot think of ever wanting to be a runner. But probably since the beginning of college, I have been saying that I wish I was a runner. How you can hate something and yet want to be good at it, I have no clue.

In the past I would go through seasons where I would try to turn myself into a runner. But the scenario, of probably the five times that I tried, was that I would get myself mentally pumped up, head outside, get about 1/10^th of the way into a mile, think I was gonna die, and then walk the rest of the way home.

I literally remember a time in my junior year when I jumped on the treadmill and started running. I was breathing heavy and thought I was going to die, so I looked down imagining that I had run at least half a mile and the screen said .02. I turned the treadmill off immediately and walked back to my dorm room.

My best friend Erin is a runner. My best friend Staci is a runner. So you see that runners in my mind are legit people in this world.

It was probably this July that I hit another, “I want to be a runner,” phase. This time though, instead of just going out with the intentions of running whole miles straight, I took a new approach.

Yes, I shamefully admit that I looked up a 5K running schedule. I believe the name was “The couch to a 5K.” That sounded close to what I needed.

So I followed the running plan. The first steps were pretty simply. Run for 60 seconds, walk for 90 for a half a hour. The next week, run for 90 seconds, walk for 90. On and on.

My record and standard these days is four miles. From the couch, it worked!

More to come…