Been Awhile!

Sometimes things don’t go as planned, know what I mean?

Sooo my last entry was back in June. I can’t remember what exactly happened, but for one reason or another, The Man and I quit running. We didn’t say we quit back then, of course, no… more like, put it off. Only, we kinda didn’t get back to it for… um. A long time.

I decided that maybe we should join a gym. The thing with running around The Lake is that it’s really hard on the body. Up inclines, gopher holes, ditches, logs, rocks… I think that it was harder than it needed to be for beginner runners like the two of us.

So a couple months ago, we joined the local gym. I went the first week by myself, still with vague notions of wanting to be a runner and lose some weight, The Man wanting to get back into shape. I think we made it about two straight weeks of working out. Well, I went three, since I started a week before he did. I even lost my first pound!

And then… meh. Again, we started putting it off.

*shrugs*

So. That brings us to today. I still haven’t given up my desire to be a runner, but I realized that I had to come at it from a different angle. I talked about this in length with my best friend Shanna, and she said that maybe I just needed a goal to work towards. Instead of going to go, maybe I needed to go for a reason. So she offered to sign me up for a 5K (and pay for it!) so how could refuse? I took up that challenge, and although I’m only into week one of training, it seems to be working!

I don’t feel like I’m “just” working out to get healthier (although, a very lofty and important goal, don’t get me wrong) and lose weight. As important as those things may be, for whatever reason, they aren’t even on my radar right now. More like, I know it’ll happen BECAUSE I’m training for my first 5K.

I’ve approached it the same way I approached writing a paper in college- I have to do research, get down an outline, write the first draft, fix it, write the second draft, fix THAT, then write the paper and turn it in. I always received top grades for my papers.

I know that running and writing are two different things entirely, but I’ve latched onto the mentality of the thing, is what I’m saying. Everyday I go to the gym, as I monitor my time and distance, get my maintainable speed and pace, I feel like I’m in the “doing research” phase of this thing. I don’t know how long this phase will last, probably until I can run more than ten minutes at one time without stopping. Then I can get into the “first draft” phase, where I run the time I can run without stopping, consistently, adjusting the way my feet land, my arms move, my breathing, my overall motion, my pace, and then I’ll move onto the phase two, the “second draft” where I actually start working on adding another minute every run until I hit that thirty minute mark of non-stop running. The finished project will be, of course, the actual 5K itself.

So that’s what I’m doing, and I really like how I feel and where my head is at. I have discovered that running is based on as much as what is going on upstairs as well as the body. Can’t do it if you don’t want it!