Run for your life
In junior high school our cross country coach had an afterschool club named “Run for your life”. Three days a week we’d meet and go running. While it was great for keeping the cross country team running in the offseason, it was even better for the other students who showed up just to run for the fun of it (I know, many of you think running couldn’t possibly be fun). Once a year, the teacher would even take us as a group to the San Jose Mercury News 10k.
For some reason, when high school came around I wasn’t into running on the cross country team as much. I didn’t like the coach as much and I was definitely not as talented or as dedicated as the other team members. So I mostly stopped running.
Early in college I got back into running. I liked running around San Luis Obispo and it kept me in good shape. I ran for most of my first three years there. Mostly late at night, but occasionally during the day when I had a class I particularly didn’t want to attend. Then came the event that changed my life and my health forever: I changed majors. Who would have known that switching majors to computer science would come with an automatic 50+ pound penalty (I went from a very comfortable 175 to a much less comfortable 225-240).
Over the years since graduating, I’ve done many things to try and lose weight. Some have worked very well, including going on the South Beach Diet and the Abs Diet. These are both fine diets and worked very well for me. But ultimately (for one reason or another) I went off the diets and put back some of the weight I’d lost (not all of it, though).
For the last 4 weeks I’ve been doing something different. I’ve gone back to running, the sport that kept me in shape through all of high school despite eating like a cow (stupid puberty). I’ve taken up one of Jeff Galloway’s marathon programs and have stuck to it well for a whole month. I’ve been outside, running hard 4 days a week. I started the program out of shape and not running well at all with 2 goals in mind: lose some weight and be ready to run CIM in early December.
Today I finished my 6 mile long run (long is a relative term). Did I burn up the roads of Folsom? No. Did I finish with a strong sense of satisfaction? Yes. I can’t even remember the last time I did a 6 mile run. I remember doing a 4+ mile loop during college. I remember doing a 10k (6.2 miles) back in high school. That’s about the last time I remember doing a 6 mile run. Of course, I can’t celebrate too much right now because in a week I do a 7 mile run…then an 8 mile run the week after that. But for now I’ll celebrate the fact that I’m doing something for myself that will hopefully have a lasting effect on my health.
