This Body Was (not) Made for Running

I have a confession to make: In my mind, I am the world’s greatest athlete. I can run for miles and miles without ever having to stop to catch my breath or grab a drink of water. I can do hundreds of push-ups, sit-ups, pull-ups – you name it, I can do it. In reality, I don’t much care for exercise. Don’t get me wrong, I love the way I feel after I’ve worked out. It’s like my body knows it needs to be more active. I just hate the physical act of exercising. Last January, I joined a gym. I figured that if I was paying money each month, I’d feel guilty if I didn’t actually get my money’s worth. That part, the guilty part, worked well for me and I kept up with going, but I am such a germaphobe that it wasn’t an enjoyable experience. My time at the gym went something like this:

  1. Walk into gym, scan card, go to locker room
  2. Put things in locker, wash hands
  3. Soak a paper towel with the disinfectant spray and head to first machine (or mat… whichever was empty)
  4. Scrub the item thoroughly with paper towel
  5. Exercise
  6. Clean said machine again with paper towel
  7. Throw paper towel away and get another one soaked with disinfectant to move to next machine
  8. Repeat process until finished
  9. Wash hands
  10. Remove items from locker without touching anything I don’t own and head to car
  11. Disinfect hands again as soon as I get into car

Basically, what should have been a forty-five minute workout ended up being somewhere close to an hour and a half or even longer every single time. It was just so frustrating, so I quit. Afterwards, I started feeling lazy and sluggish again, so I began looking for a workout I could do at home. Our good friend Doug used the C25k (Couch to 5K) running program to start running and loved it, so I decided to give it a try. This was a month or so ago. Doug kept me honest; on a regular basis, he would ask me if I had started the program or not, and I would tell him the truth (no) and follow that with some excuse as to why I hadn’t started it yet. (A lot of it was that I was really hoping to get Scotty to run with me, but he really just doesn’t want to do that. I can’t honestly say that I blame him… no one really wants to intentionally make themselves miserable! HA!) I always felt guilty when I told Doug I hadn’t started (even though he never made me feel that way), but last week I could tell he didn’t really think I was ever going to start the program. Well! I had to show him, right? (Don’t worry – I’m not competitive at all!) So last Thursday, I did day 1, week 1 of the eight-week program. Unfortunately, the dogs looked SO cute, spinning in circles, wagging their tails, begging to go with me… They knew I was heading out for a walk. Little did they know, this walk would include running. I caved and decided to take them along. Less than halfway through, Turbo sat down. He didn’t just slow down. He sat down and gave me a look that clearly said, “Woman, if you think we are going to continue this, you’ve got another thing coming. Now, carry me!” What choice did I have? I picked the little guy up (thankfully Roger was still plugging along), and we turned around to head back home. If you’ve never tried running with a Yorkie tucked under your arm, I suggest you give it a shot some day. It’s quite an experience. Actually, no… don’t. You’ll probably have the same reaction I did, which was, after sixty seconds of running, you give up and say to yourself, “Self! You’ve done a great job today, getting out here, starting the C25K program. It’s okay if you have to walk the rest of the times that the lady in your headphones tells you are times you should be running. She isn’t trying to do this with ten pounds of dead weight tucked under her right arm. We’ll just try day 1, week 1 again tomorrow.”

So that’s what I did. Only “tomorrow” turned into four days later because my body hurt. However, today I managed to run/walk 2.26 miles in thirty minutes. I’m quite pleased with myself. I won’t lie – a few times I had to stop my C25K app and hunker over to catch my breath, but I made it. What’s more important, I intend to keep up with this. I really do! And I’m going to post about it often to keep myself both honest and motivated, even if I’m the only person who ever reads this blog.