Share your running success stories!

I grew up hating running (due in no small part to my abnormal gait from an ortho issue attracting attention) and basically lived a completely sedentary life all the way into adulthood. I didn't get fed up with my fat *kitten* until after I'd had my third baby in three years but when I decided I was over it, I got it together. I lost all the weight inside of 7 months and decided I would try running because HIIT was misery and eff lifting.

In the beginning it was embarrassing how slow my pacing was and my endurance was absolutely zero. Thankfully I am hard headed as they come, so I kept at it. Now, a year and half on, I run in roughly the top 25th percentile for women my age. My primary distance love is the ultramarathon. I've placed on races of half distance and on 50 miles. I've recently been published in Women's Running (http://womensrunning.competitor.com/2017/11/real-runners/50-mile-race-real-runner_83393) and have previously been featured by organizations such as Run Like a Girl. And all of that because I refused to accept failure and kept putting one foot in front of the other (literally Haha!).

Running is 99% a mental sport- fortify your mind and you will be limitless! If you are looking for a fun accountability group there is a Running Challenge group here on MFP, would love to see you there

I'm a new runner (started September 19, my late dad's birthday). I never thought I would run, as I was born with a congenital foot deformity that made it painful to even walk a mile. Running was out of the question. At 27, I had life-changing surgery to rebuild my foot. During my 3 month recovery, I read an article about a woman who started to run later in life, and decided I wanted to run a 5k someday. I tried a 1 mile fun run a couple of years ago, with no preparation, and ended it gasping and miserable. It wasn't until this year, motivated by my 11-year-old who's on the cross-country team, that I started to run. I ran their 1.6 mile course with them with no preparation and no walking breaks, and wound up sore and discouraged. My favorite middle-school English teacher, who later became a running trainer, volunteered to train me. I decided I wanted to run a 5k on Mother's Day. It took until late October before I could run a mile. But now, I've suddenly stretched out from 2 miles to 3.1 in just a week. Now she's talking about working up to 4 miles.

I'm still slow, but I have endurance. And if I can do it, you can do it!

This is a long, sad story, but it has a happy ending and I hope it serves to inspire. When I was thirty, I suffered my second pregnancy loss, at 5 months along. It had been a difficult pregnancy, and I was very sick, and would continue to have strange health issues for about a year after. I had also gained a lot of baby weight. Imagine having all the baby weight but no baby.
So there I was, no baby, unemployed, overweight, and sick. With little else to do at the time besides grieve, I decided to do C25K. My goal at the time was just to be able to run a half hour 3 days a week, simply for fitness. I had never run in my life, never even worked out consistently, although I was already a fairly healthy eater at the time.
I fell in love with running pretty quickly. To be honest, it helped that during those awful months, the fact that I was gaining this new skill- something I never thought I could do- was the only thing I found any joy in. I remember laying next to my husband at night silently sobbing, and concentrating on the memory of my run that day… rather, the feeling I accomplished what I had set out to do, and it was the only way I could fall asleep.
About halfway into C25K, I decided I’d “reward” my good work with a 5K at the end of my training. So about 3 months after I started running, I ran my first 5K with my husband crossing the finish line with me. At that point, I figured if I could run 3.1 miles, I could certainly run 6.2, so I started looking for my first 10K. It was around the 10K that I got a job with a great company that I’m still with today.
After the 10K, I figured, well, if I can run 6.2 miles, I can certainly run 13.1, so onto my first half marathon. This was 2011, things were looking up, but then that summer I had yet another pregnancy loss. This one was very early on, but I told myself that I’d give it one more shot and then I was done. I also kept devoting myself to improving my health, eating better (hi veggies!!), adding strength and cross-training into the mix, and running longer and faster. The weight kept coming off too. No longer overweight, I was working toward being in the best shape of my life.
So, you guessed it, once I finished my half marathon, I thought to myself if I could run 13.1 miles, I could certainly run 26.2. I signed up for my first marathon. Training was arduous, not to mention the race itself. It’s such a mental accomplishment, to keep your body in motion even though every fiber is telling you to stop. Still to this day, running towards and crossing the finish line was still the biggest natural high I have ever experienced.
I ran the marathon at the very beginning of 2012- that was a very good year. At that point I did NOT think I could certainly run any farther, so I kept up with half-marathons. In September, I PR’d my half marathon then two days later found out I was pregnant. Thanks to being in good shape, the AMAZING doctors I worked with, my employer-paid health insurance paying for my very expensive injections, and the mental grit I’d developed from running a marathon, 9 months later she came out screaming.
Fast forward to last month when I ran my first half-marathon since having my second child. I’m still working toward my ever-escalating fitness goals, and running is the foundation. My family is complete. It’s hard to overstate just how much running changed my life. Anyone considering C25K… It all starts with that first 60 second run!