There's a lady in our neighborhood who runs every day, almost without fail. Rain, shine, cold, heat, wind, snow; it doesn't matter. Running Lady (we call her Running Lady, although I do know her real name) runs.
I used to joke about running. If you ever see me run, I'd tell people, then you'd better run too. Don't ask questions, don't waste time looking to see what's coming, just run. The idea being that if I'm running, then something is chasing me; and you, to save your life, don't need to outrun whatever it is. You only need to outrun me, and that's not hard. The bar is pretty low.
Well, never say never, is what I always say (although I suppose you should never say always, either.) Unpursued by anything life-threatening, I started to run a few weeks ago, and I feel strangely compelled to continue. I'm really terrible at it, and I mean really terrible. I'm slow, awkward, and lack endurance.
Every runner hits a wall at some point; for me, it's usually about 15 or 20 steps in. That's no exaggeration. I'm barely out of my driveway when I start to feel like I can't go on, but I push past it, and once I do, I can usually focus, for a few steps at least, on something other than how much I hate to run. Each time I run now, the number of steps that I can run while thinking something other than "When can I stop? Now? Did I run a mile yet? No? Not quite two blocks? That felt like a mile. Damn it," increases, and my determination to go just a few more steps grows. Eventually, I stop and walk, and then I start running again.
I hope that someday, maybe even one day soon, I'll be able to run for longer distances and that the walking breaks will be fewer and shorter and farther between. For now, I'll take what I can get. I'm not planning to train for a marathon (even a 5K would be ridiculously ambitious at this point) but never say never.
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