I can run now!

On New Year’s Eve morning approximately three and a half months ago, I was cruising around the app store on my phone, looking for a new form of entertainment, when I came across a little $5.00 app called “Couch to 5K.” Now, I very rarely spend more than a dollar on any app, but just out of curiosity, I clicked on it. It looked pretty cool, but I was highly aware that I could never do anything as crazy as run a 5K. So I wandered on. I think I ended up buying a marbles game instead. But somewhere in the back of my mind, the idea stuck. “I’m a couch potato,” I thought. “I’ve already fulfilled one of the requirements.”

So New Year’s rolled on, and I got together with some friends. Naturally, drinking ensued. We began discussing New Year’s resolutions. In a fit of drunken bravado, I mentioned the C25K app and declared that I planned on buying it and learning to run a 5K. A friend of mine said something along the lines of, “Hey, what a coincidence. There’s a 5K run in March.” “Oh, really,” I replied. “You know what? I’m going to be ready to run a 5K by March.” Now, I have never in my life bothered with a New Year’s resolution for longer than maybe a day and a half before losing interest, and I naturally assumed that this would be along the same lines. I cared enough to actually go ahead and spend the five dollars on the app, and kind of assumed it would end there.

The idea stuck, though, and I started working on the program about two weeks into January. I was so pitiful to begin with that I would run around in my yard, rather than going to the park so no one would see me puffing. It was embarrassing. A full minute of running was tough. Three minutes almost killed me. By eight minutes at a time, I had improved enough that I felt comfortable running at the park instead of in circles in my front yard, but I was still huffing and puffing at each run. And looming in the near future was what seemed to be an impossible task. A twenty minute run.
This twenty minute run was a source of real stress to me. I honestly didn’t think I would be able to manage it. It was insane. Who were these crazy people who thought I could suddenly run for twenty minutes without stopping? Insanity. The big day came. And I ran for twenty minutes—without stopping. I think it was at this point that I was hooked. It was no longer a silly New Year’s resolution. It was a challenge—and it was a challenge I was perfectly capable of conquering.
Fast forward several weeks. I decided at work one Wednesday that instead of stopping when the nice (but bossy) lady told me to “cool down” I would keep going until I had actually completed the distance of a 5K. It was tough, but I did it. It took me 47 minutes and I walked for about five of those minutes. At this point, I still had about three and a half weeks of the program left to get through, so I decided to turn every Wednesday’s run into a 5K, while still following the program the rest of the time. I also decided that I would not be walking any more while running the full length 5Ks. If I wasn’t unconscious, I was going to be moving my feet at a decent speed.

The next Wednesday, I managed to run the full 5K distance for the first time. It took 39 minutes. It was a wonderful feeling! Technically, I had achieved my goal. But now I needed to make it official. It took a little searching to find a run near enough to me that I wouldn’t have to get up at 4:00 or 4:30 in the morning to get to it (I live out in the boondocks), but I found one. And I’ll admit, I was really excited about it. Scared—but excited. I had never so much as seen a 5K take place—I had no idea what to expect. Fortunately, I had this site and lots of supportive people to cheer me on and walk me through how exactly everything would work. It was SO helpful to know that if I had any questions at all I could type them in and have dozens of people answering and offering support at any time.

Last Saturday, the big day finally arrived. My wonderful family left their warm beds at 6:30 in the morning to come with me and cheer me on. The run went wonderfully (I’ll tell that story another time) and I finished in 36 minutes—only one minute over my goal time. And considering the Gigantic Hill of Death at the very end of the run, I have to say I was super excited about how I did. It was a really wonderful experience, and I’ll never forget crossing the finish line, knowing that I had kept running for the whole three miles and that I had actually achieved the crazy, impossible goal I had set for myself only three and a half months earlier.

I well and truly have the bug now, and I know there’s no way I could just put a check mark next to “running” on my list of Things To Do In My Life and walk away. I planned to take a week off from running as a reward for finishing the 5K, and expected to enjoy the break—running is hard work! But I found myself itching to get started again. Before I knew what I had done, I had downloaded a Bridge to 10K program on my phone and started training. Hopefully, six weeks from now I’ll be posting my run time for my first ever 10K! That would just be amazing.

So, the moral of the (very long) story is that it is possible! Just get started. Try running for a few days, a week, a month, and see what happens. You might start out running circles in your yard, huffing and puffing, but the next thing you know, you’ll have to find a new goal, because you’ll have left your first one in the dust.

I’m a runner! Woo!