I recently joined a local running training program and to be honest, I don’t know what in the world I was thinking!
I’ve never been a runner. I have no idea what a runners high feels like. To me, running is work. Monotonous, boring, often painful, work. In the past, I’ve
run because I played club, high school, and later on, college soccer. For me, running after a ball, running to support a teammate’s play, running to make a GREAT play, wasn’t really running. It was being part of team. It was going after a common goal.
Running for the sake of running? What in the world did I sign up for?!?
Both of my parents have participated in this running program for the majority of 2016. My mother LOVES it, possibly more than her kids on some days. My dad did it mainly to support my mom, but ended up getting sidelined because of a knee injury. I thought to myself, “Self, maybe you’ll enjoy it as much as they do!”
Sure. Sure. The lies we tell ourselves.
To be honest, I don’t hate it. I had forgotten that I hate exercising with people. I’ve never been one of those people who chats at the gym. The gym is for working out. So, it has been hard for me to see the community side of it.
Also, as I mentioned in a previous post, I suffer from depression. And some days, getting out of bed and putting on pants is a win. It makes it hard when I want to go out for a run (more like a run/walk in my case, but anyway) and I physically can’t get it together. And then I beat myself up because I didn’t work out, which then makes me even more depressed. It’s a vicious cycle.
But I’ve committed to it, all 8 weeks of it. And I’m going to try to stick to the schedule as much as I can. I will be gentle with myself when I come up short some days. And I will push myself when I feel able. One and half weeks in, six and a half week to go.
The Opinionettes 