August 14, 2012…..it was time to try again. It seems like multiple people in my life were now encouraging me to try running. What was wrong with all these people? Who decided they should all gang up on me????
And yet.
Maybe the problem wasn’t them.
Maybe the problem was me.
Maybe I should stop telling myself “I can’t”
when I serve a God who says, “That’s okay, I AM.”
Maybe I should stop trusting in myself
thinking I had to find the strength all by myself to start running.
Maybe I should trust in God my Creator
and believe that He could help me do this.
So it was that on August 14th, I added an app on my phone called “Couch to 5K.” I also signed up for a 2 mile run which would take place just one month later (TOMORROW). I thought that having a milestone to shoot for might keep me motivated. The app has you go out 3x/week and operates through interval training so the first day I went out, I started with a 5 minute brisk walk. Then I alternated 60 seconds of jogging and 90 seconds of walking for a total of 20 minutes. And the cool part was when I hit “start” on the app, a countdown would begin and each time I had to switch between jogging and walking, it beeped at me to let me know. This freed me up to just focus….focus on my breathing, focus on my form and focus on God.
Really focus on God.
Time spent running became time spent praying, singing, worshipping.
There were days that I wanted to quit. Days when I didn’t want to get up early. Days when I was too sore, too tired, too whatever. Days when the voices screamed so loud, I was sure others could hear them.
But I also began to tune in to another Voice. A Voice of Truth, of Love….a Voice that said I could do this, that I wasn’t alone. And so I pressed on.
The training is a 9 week program to build you up to a 5K run but I only had 5 weeks before the race. I still figured this could work since the race was only 2 miles, not a 5K. About week 3, I think I strained or pulled my hamstring. I could barely walk, it hurt so bad. This wasn’t the soreness that came from working out. I actually came to appreciate soreness….it helped me know that I had done something. But oh no, this was terrible pain in my leg. I limped around for 2 days before it finally started feeling better. Mike and I talked through stretching exercises to help me and the next week I started running again. (Did I mention that he might just be the best trainer ever?! Such a blessing to have his support!)
I couldn’t give up. By this time, I had told lots of people that I was running the 2 mile Pumpkin Classic. I even invited a bunch of my friends to run with me and some of them took me up on the idea!
This week was week 5 of my training.
Day 1 – 5 minute warmup walk, then jog 5 minutes, walk 3 minutes, jog 5 minutes, walk 3 minutes, jog 5 minutes
Day 2 – 5 minute warmup walk, then jog 8 minutes, walk 5 minutes, jog 8 minutes
Day 3 – 5 minute warmup walk, jog 20 minutes with no walking
Up until this week, I had never varied from the prescribed training. Each day I jogged when it said jog and I walked when it said walk. But week 5, day 1 was a different story. I started jogging and toward the end of the 5 minutes, I decided to keep jogging. I ended up doing the day 2 regimen. And it went great! So I did it again on day 2. But day 3 which was two days ago….oh day 3 of week 5.
September 13, 2012….a day to be remembered. Prior to this day, I had never run an entire mile in my life. I always had to incorporate some walking. But this day was a new day. Because on this day, I RAN 2 MILES WITHOUT STOPPING!!!!!!!!!!!! That’s right, not only did I run the 20 minutes that my app told me to run but I kept going until I had run an entire 2 miles.
And then I thought. Yes, I had a thought. What if I put this much effort and discipline into my journey with God? What if I spent this much time with Him? What if?
More to come….
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