Why Running?

I’ll admit right here and now that I have always thought runners were crazy. I always thought runners must be morning people who don’t need coffee to survive. I’ve thought only people with good knees and the lungs of tuba players should run. I shook my head and laughed when a friend of mine told me that if I loved Disney, I *had* to do a runDisney event. There was literal laugh-out-loudage.

Now… I have my pride, and it’s hard for me to admit this, but….

I was WRONG.

I know, right? It shocked me more than it shocked you, I assure you.  So what changed my mind?

Enter a quick day trip to Disney on my way to visit my grandma in Florida…. I happened to be there during Marathon weekend, and there were all of these people walking around with these shiny, gorgeous medals around their necks. I was disappointed to discover that you can’t simply buy these in a store, but that you have to pay exorbitant amounts of money to run long distances to get one.

After I got back home that weekend, I told my husband that I wanted to run a half marathon at Disney. You should have seen the look he gave me! He told me that I could only sign up for a half marathon if I’d actually done some running, so I pulled my sneakers out of a closet, downloaded an app to track my time and distance, and did a lap of my neighborhood.

I came back to the house after 1.06 miles in 18:45. That’s a 17:45/mile pace… wow. That’s slow. Sure, my neighborhood is in no way flat, but that’s *slow*!

Well, if you’ve ever met me, I don’t do well with failure of any sort, so I modified Jeff Galloway’s run/walk/run training plan to fit my schedule, and I decided to run 4-5 times a week. As ambitious a plan as it was, it’s worked so far!

So far, I’ve been running for 6 weeks. In that time, I have run 70 miles, burnt 10,411 calories, and I’ve finished both a 5k and a 10k (race report to come). I already feel far more accomplished and motivated than I ever have to get moving.

I’m not a morning person, my knees pop regularly, and I have more weight on my bones than I should. I always thought that meant I couldn’t be a runner. Apparently I *can* be. How awesome is that?

So, now I’m signed up for the Wine and Dine Half Marathon at Disney, and I’m surprisingly looking forward to 13.1 miles. Crazy? Maybe. Fun? Definitely.

Until next time…. KnitOneRunToo