Motivation

I've never been a runner. In middle school when we had to do the 1 mile running test I'd always be super slow and skip a lap when the PE teacher wasn't looking and lie about my total time! I'd do anything to NOT run!

I mentioned in my last post that I got a personal trainer in college. On my very first day we sat down and discussed what kinds of exercising I liked so we could focus on the positives and skip the stuff I hated. I told her I'd do anything but run. Well, she didn't really like the answer and while she probably had me run less than most of the rest of her clients, she most certainly made me run! And I hated every second of it.

Then I went home for a few weeks between college and starting my new job. While I was home I tried to keep up with my exercising but my parents didn't belong to a gym and didn't have much gym equipment so I went out for a few walks with my parents. My mom tried to get me to run and passed on this advice from a coworker who introduced her to running, "don't focus on the speed, go whatever speed you need to go to go the distance."

Ok, I can run at a snails pace for maybe a mile before I get sick of hearing myself pant and am just bored because I can't talk to the person I'm running with! Over the next few years I tried to force myself to run but never made it more than a mile or two at a time. I'd always try to pick another machine at the gym to work on and avoid the treadmill at all costs. Then a friend of mine signed up for a half marathon and I ran next to her one day on the treadmill as she was training and I thought "I can do this." That lasted about 2 days before I was back to the hating running thing.

Then it happened. One day last September my friend e-mailed me asking for a donation for a cause she was running for that weekend. I wasn't busy that weekend so I decided that my donation would be in the form of paying the entry fee to participate in the 5k race. My first 5k race! My goal was simply to finish. I ran 3 miles on a treadmill the weekend before at a slow pace, stopping for a quick walk in the middle so I knew I could probably do it. It wasn't a huge race and I had a few friends running. After the gun went off I settled in behind my friends who I knew were faster. My goal was to keep them at least in sight throughout the whole race but to run the entire way. I started off waaay to fast and was dying at the end but I finished!