people often ask me, how did you get started running? every runner’s story is different.
some are born with great genes and run because they are good at it.
not me.
some are driven type A people who have to run or go crazy.
not me.
some do it because they have a point to prove: others would never believe they could run a marathon and so they do it to prove them wrong.
not me.
still others run because life circumstances challenge them to do it.
now you’re getting close.
i was 42, divorced for a couple years, had packed on some pounds in effort to isolate and it was working. my best friend miChal had moved to tennessee a couple of years earlier and she had recently had this really strange God-experience in which He had clearly called her out of a similar state of couch-potatoness to run a marathon.
yeah, He called a complete non-runner to run 26.2 miles. she and i were talking a lot about it but i couldn’t run across the room, much less across a city and couldn’t understand this calling she had to change all that about herself. i mean, sports wasn’t my thing; i was from childhood the worst athlete you know. so i tried to be supportive, but my real reaction was more like “talk to the hand.”
but have you noticed? God has a way of wearing down your resistance.
slowly i became more interested in this newfound discipline miChal was developing in her life. she’s a great writer and as i followed along with her blog on the topic, it was really starting to mean something to me personally. so i bought two of the marathoning books she was reading, thinking i could use them for inspiration for discipline in my own out-of-control life. not for running, just for discipline. that’s what i told myself anyway.
meantime, God had a yet to be revealed calling on my own life. i kept hearing Him telling me to ‘get ready’ but i knew not for what. turns out it was for something altogether differerent, but not knowing what He had in mind, i began getting ready on all fronts. i challenged everything: my job, where i lived, my prayer life, my bouts with depression, my addicition to food, my loneliness, even the paint on my walls. if it wasn’t right, i changed it.
finally i was ready to change my physical behavior. i started sleeping regularly, taking vitamins. i began dieting and lost 13 lbs. then i got stuck for three weeks and couldn’t lose another ounce.
all miChal’s talk about running took its toll on me one cool fall morning about 5:30 am. usually a sleep-til-7 kind of girl, i rose in the dark and dug through my closet to find my 20 year old sneakers and stepped out into a time of the morning i hadn’t seen since my last all-nighter in college. out on the track that is literally in my backyard (my house backs up to the middle school football field), i huffed, puffed, jogged, stumbled, walked and all the while sweated through three agonizing laps.
returning home exhausted but proud, i went to wake my kids for school. i started with my oldest son andy, and said,
“time to get up, son. by the way, guess what i just did?”
“what, mom?”
“i just ran a mile.”
“where?”
“on the track behind the house.”
“no kidding, you ran FOUR laps around the track?!”
“no, i ran THREE, isn’t that a mile?!!” you could hear it in my voice: i couldn’t believe how bad i felt and i hadn’t even gone a mile.
but andy said, “way to go mom, i’m proud of you. i’ll go with you tomorrow.”
“no way,” i said. “tomorrow is your 16th birthday. no teenager in his right mind wants to get up in the dark on his 16th birthday and go run.”
unfazed, he said, “i will if you will.”
and that’s how it started. october 6, 2003.
three months later, i made a new year’s resolution (which i never do) to run a 5K in april. building up to 3.1 miles in four months seemed within the realm of reason, although i had never run farther than half that.
two days later, on january 3rd, i told miChal about it and she said, “i have a better idea: you should do a half marathon with me in april.”
was she joking? that’s 13.1 miles! turns out she was completely serious. she said it was in nashville, and it was a music marathon. we could make a road trip, have some fun. fun? it was sounding like torture. but i promised her i would think about it.
two hours later, i called her back and said i was in. doodling as i had thought about it, i simply drew a “1” in front of my 3.1 mile goal, written in red in my journal. that’s how easily 3.1 became 13.1 and how naively i joined the ranks of the insane…
over the course of six months, i dropped 33 lbs and went from that first 3/4 mile stumble to a 5K (two months ahead of the original plan) to the country music half-marathon in nashville in april 2004. in what i found to be a humbling display of solidarity from a teenager, my son andy also ran the half, as well as two other friends from here, miChal and 10 of her friends from tennessee. 15 of us altogether. it was the most exhilirating accomplishment of my life at the time. since then i have run 3 marathons, 4 half marathons and thousands of training miles. who’d a thunk.
that very first 5K remains my PR (fastest recorded time). my fastest half was 2:22 and my fastest full 5:29. my goal is a sub-5 hour marathon, which may not seem like much to most people, but to have a marathon time that begins with 4 is heaven to the little girl who was always the last picked for softball (“do we have to have HER? we’d rather play one short.”)
all i can say is that life is hard, but God is good.