Monday, June 18, 2007

Born to Run

I've got a new hobby. Running. Can you imagine? I have always hated running for the sake of just running. Running as part of a sport was OK, but running laps?! I hated it so much. During sports practice in high school, I was always one of the last people to finish.

Recently, however, I deceded that I would like to be a runner. Even in my hatred for running, I always envied those people jogging down the street just because. I wondered what would make someone want to just run and where their motivation to keep going came from. Wouldn't it be boring? What about those days when it was either really hot or really cold?

Anyway, I'm not sure what made me decide to do it (especially since it's so hot out now), but about a week and a half ago I ran. I thought I'd run one lap, walk one, etc, but it didn't work out like that. I couldn't make it the whole lap! I found the website for Runner's World Magazine and they had a plan to get me to run 20 minutes straight in 10 weeks. It seemed simple enough, so Thursday, I began the run/walk plan. run a minute, walk a minute for 20 minutes. and who knew? I made it! I gradually increase the run time over the 10 weeks. next week I run 2 minutes and walk 1 and so on. Saturday I bought new sneakers (the ones I had were about 6 years old) and some running shorts and t-shirts. It's funny because I've already noticed a slight improvement in my stamina. I'm really excited about it so I've been reading Runner's World articles all week. Maybe I can even enter a race some day!

1 comment:

Jen said...

Nick and I used used that run/walk technique to train for the L.A. marathon in 2000. It really works! Although I didn't actually participate in the marathon, I was up to like 10 miles by the time my sciatic nerve acted up, and kept me from adding any more.