Seriously? Me? A runner?
My blogging buddy over at My Angle had a couple really good posts recently (here and here) about whether or not you are a real runner and it gave me some food for thought.
The first thing that always comes to mind when I think of myself as a runner was when I was a teenager living in England and going to an all girl’s English school. We had the uniforms, ties and all. One day a teacher said there would be a cross-country run that weekend and they wanted some of us to participate. As is pretty typical for me, I volunteered, having no idea what I was in for but it sounded like “fun”.
My friend and I showed up in our school PE uniforms and stood out like sore thumbs were shocked to see what we had signed up for. Here we were, complete with our PE skirts and shoes next to girls in sweats, running pants, who were stretching and warming up, and we stood around having no idea what to do. But we ran. And we ran. Up hills, down hills, slow, not so slow – don’t think we ever got to even moderately fast – and we finished at least an hour or more after everyone else finished, but we finished.
My dad and I laughed about this scene for years to come because of the incongruity of our participation in the event. We had no training, we’d never run before – other than in school sports and that was limited (I was a swimmer, not a runner) – and we obviously didn’t know what we were doing, and we certainly didn’t have the appropriate attire for the sport.
The point is none of that mattered. I just jumped in with both feet and did it. At the time, I cried when we were done because I was so exhausted. I pushed myself to finish something I didn’t wanted to do once I’d started it.
A few years later, when I went to a boarding school in the south of England (that’s the actual school in the picture), a class mate and I did some more running. We’d run a few miles through the English countryside, and then she taught me how to sprint the last jog back downhill into the school parking lot. It was during one of those sprints at the end of a run that I experienced what I’d call my first “runner’s high” where there was so much energy and vitality and oxygen going through my system that I literally felt as if I was walking six inches off the ground.
Fast forward about thirty years.
Here I am, nearly 80 pounds lost, and I’m running. I’ve done two 5k runs now and am starting to train for a 12k run in December. I have no idea whether I have the right technique, whether I’m wearing the right clothes – although I do have the right shoes – or if I’m breathing right or running fast enough. But I’m running. Clearly, that drive to do something I’ve never done before without totally knowing what I’m letting myself in for has not left me. I still tend to do things because they sound fun with very little thought given to whether I have the physical ability to do it or not.
The point is I’m doing, which is way more than I’ve done in years past. When my friend recently said to me “You’re a runner now”, I almost corrected her but then I thought about it. Yes, I am. I may not be a marathon runner like Kara Goucher (yet?), or the fastest runner in my category. I’m no longer sitting by dreaming of getting off my butt and moving, watching my life go by like I’ve done for years, but I’m stepping out and living it. I don’t care (much) what my speed is unless it’s to improve upon my own personal best.
I’m putting one foot in front of the other and moving, and isn’t that the point? (Oh, yeah, and to want to have a body like Kara’s doesn’t hurt either.)
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