I am not a runner.
Now, let me tell you about how in a moment of obviously coffee crazed insanity, I signed myself up to run the Broad Street 10-miler with my company in May.
I repeat… I. am. not. a. runner.
After we got confirmation that we were all in fact running, (There is a lottery system thing so there was a chance our team wouldn’t get selected.) my first thought was “shit.”
I am not a runner.
What running demon from hell possessed me and signed me up?! Now I work out. I can walk the hell out of a treadmill. I can do a nice run/walk interval thing around my neighborhood. I have even completed the Jillian Michaels 90 day workout dvds. I however, do not run for extended periods of time. (Unless something is chasing me or there is an ice cream truck that also sells great boots or I’m in elementary school being forced to do the presidential fitness test. I still can not touch my toes in a metal box.)
Now one of my very best friends IS a runner. In fact, she just ran the Hershey half marathon this past October. She has been talking about how great it felt and how awesome it was to have a goal in exercising that wasn’t “to lose weight”. I blame her for me signing up for this.
So once i got over the “holy shit” of it. I started training. Let me tell you I’m only a week in to training and when I got on the treadmill with the intent to run the first time, I only ran 1.25 miles. I walked the rest. The next time I ran 1.75 miles. This Saturday I ran 2 miles fully! and then ran/walked another 2. Yet, I am not a runner. Or am I?
Are you picking up where I’m going here yet? I’m 30 years old and until now I have never ever called myself a runner. As I was doing just that thing though, I had to question, what defines a runner? Am I not running? Am I not giving it my best shot?
I realized that, in my mind, to call yourself a runner, you needed to run marathons. Or at least a 5k or something. I also told myself stories about how hard running was and that I couldn’t do it. I didn’t like running. My knees got tired and my legs and I couldn’t breathe after a few minutes and on and on.
That first time running, I’ll admit was tough. There is a point for me where I want to quit and walk. I can feel my legs are sore and tired. My breathing is heavy. I kept going though and amazingly, it got easier. Each time I run I go a little farther now and each time, it gets a little easier! I still run slow and probably look more like a water buffalo than a gazelle. (A term my friend who is a runner now and I came up with) I’m trying though and while I may not quite feel like a runner yet. I can’t tell myself the story that I’m not a runner anymore because…well… I just might be.
We tell ourselves stories every day about what we can and can’t do. Sometimes we need to challenge those stories to see if they are true or if we want to change them. Maybe you are a runner and didn’t know it? Maybe you are an artist? Maybe you can get that job? If we don’t challenge the stories we tell ourselves, we will never grow or move forward.
Challenge a story you tell yourself. You might just find you’re a runner too.