Wednesday, February 12, 2014

Running felt bad until one day it felt good

“Running felt bad until one day it felt good” (read this line in an article by Marc Parent in Runners World, The Newbie Chronicles (www.runnersworld.com/newbie) – I think that is such a great statement.

I didn't like to run when I took it up at the ripe age of 52 - I took it up to improve my cardio-vascular health and to get other parts of me moving. I didn't like the dynamics of a gym, and so I was looking for something else and I thought that running might be it. But I didn't like to run. It didn't feel good to me. I didn't know how, I couldn't go far without walking, it hurt, and it was hard. As a kid I played a lot of soccer, and in PE the coach would have us run around the fields and so on, but I remember running (when not playing soccer) as being more of a punishment than being fun. I had some odd knee pain that bothered me whenever I tried to run and that was always an instant discouragement (or an excuse…).  Nevertheless, I took on running because I felt some urgency to improve my health.

So here I was at age 52 struggling to figure out how to run, knowing in the back of my head that it was supposed to be good for me, but not having any fun at all with it. It was so hard and I was sooo bad at it. I couldn't even go a full mile without walking. It was embarrassing.

Regardless, I trudged on, struggling to run a mile without walking, and then 2 miles, and then 3. It took me forever to reach that 3 mile milestone. I even ran a half marathon without feeling great about running – I did the HM just to prove to myself that I could.

And then, not too long after that HM it suddenly did feel good to be running – it wasn't like an epiphany or a sudden revelation – I remember going out for a run and thinking how good it feels to be running. In fact, in my log I noticed that my notes started saying things like I had had a “great run”; not just a good run or an ok run, but I had a GREAT RUN. It was as if my physical and mental cogs finally got lined up and I was now in sync. I am sure that it was because my endurance levels were substantially better than when I started running, the weather was great, my music was on cue to my mood, I hadn't eaten too much the night before, I had gotten a good night’s sleep, and so on… But that was a big turning point for me.  It felt good. It was no longer this horrible struggle. I could run, I could feel the endorphin's kick in, and I knew that when I was done with my run that I would always feel better for having run.

The point here is that I know now that whenever I’m running that I-will-feel-good. Admittedly, not every run is a great run... sometimes there are bad runs - but for the most part, most of the time, running does feel good...:-)

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