(re)born to run – the story

this is the story of how my lifelong abhorrence for running has been transformed into an all-out enthusiasm that makes me question my own identity. i’ve deciphered the secret code to my running happiness, and i’m a new person when i lace up my running shoes. the old me was hopelessly lost when it came to running:

before i graduated from high school, i had never run more than a mile or two at a time. i was fine with that–i hated running. i spent my teen extracurricular hours dancing at a local studio and for the school drill team (playing sports only for funsies at summer camp and church leagues), so team “conditioning” was not a part of my athletic training.

in college i made myself go 3.1 miles once a year for our sorority’s charity 5k. i joked that the stars had to align just so for me to have a good run: enough sleep, the perfect amount of the right food at the precise interval of time, the best time-of-the-month…i maintained that i was just not a “runner.”

in the years after college, a weekly-ish 2-3 mile jog worked it’s way in to my exercise routine, and i would complete the occasional 5k with respectable results, but i never got it. i enjoyed moving my body, but running didn’t feel like something i wanted to tolerate for more than thirty minutes–much less hours.

a handful of times i decided i was going to try to increase my distance, and my approach usually involved one of three things i heard often from runners: you need better form, better shoes, or better tunes.

following popular tips on posture and stride yielded minimal improvement. the latest high-tech shoes gave me a temporary spring in my step, but did nothing to increase my endurance. listening to my favorite upbeat music had mixed results: it inspired me to move, but messed up my breathing and pace.

i was focused on all the right areas, but in all the wrong ways.

tomorrow i’ll share how i looked at those three elements in a different way, and discovered a formula that really works for me.

image cropped from thisislondon.co.uk