Running

A few minutes after I wrote my last post, I got back on the treadmill and ran again. I ran for five minutes.

I got my running books by John "The Penguin" Bingham. I am reading "The Courage to Start: A Guide to Running for Your Life."

Here are some quotes from the introduction that really grabbed me.

"It was a mistake to quit running. I know that now. It was a
mistake to give up the joy I felt when I moved my body without nothing more
than my own legs, to let others steal my satisfaction from me. It was
a mistake that I won't make again."

As a SMO person, I have often let others steal my satisfaction from me. Yet, I am not going to let others take that from me. I refuse to let the stares of others, or their thoughts of me, stop me from achieving goals. I want to feel the joy of moving my body.

"Rediscovering the simple pleasure of running as an adult is a strange,
frustrating, wonderful, confusing, and ultimately immensely satisfying
preoccupation. It's hard to erase all the old images of yourself as clumsy
and uncoordinated and forget the feeling of isolation you felt when you were
always the last one chosen."

"Successful 'adult-onset' are made, not born. To those of us who simply want to run, the value of genetics is highly overrated. Running doesn't require an extraordinary combination of muscle and bone. It requires only the desire to move our bodies and the wisdom to accept the difference between our will and our won't."

I have never had an atheltic past. Here are my brief athletic encounterings: I played t-ball when I was five, soccer when I was in second grade, and a cheerleader in third and fourth grade. There is a lot of mental blocking to overcome that I could never become an athlete. Yet, Bingham says successful adult-onset athletes are MADE. I can choose to be a successful adult athlete. It comes down to whether I will or I won't.

"But as a runner, you have to face the truth about yourself on a regular basis, and it makes you more honest. You can't pretend to be faster than you are. You can't pretend that you are better prepared than you are. You cannot pretend to be a runner, you atually have to run."

"We all need to live out our dreams. We need to spend less time planning and organizing and more time doing. We need to spend less time worrying about doing things well and more time rejoicing that we are doing them at all."

This last quote really resonates deeply with me. I am a huge
planner and organizer. Yet I had this surgery to start living out my
dreams. To be able to have a life without limits. So what if I
can't run well, or I can barely run five minutes, I am running.