Corporate Hippy

One thing I learned about myself through biking is that my body takes a long time to warm up for activity.  If I’m in “good” shape, it will take me near 5 miles to warm up on a mountain bike ride; “not so good” shape is about 8 miles.  One miserable Iceman took a little over 10 miles.  I also know that once I’m warmed up, life gets a whole lot more enjoyable.

One thing I learned about myself through introspection and past history is that if I didn’t stick to the plan religiously, I’ll give up.

One thing I was learning about myself is that I needed to fit this in with everything else I do, not replace something else with this.  I did not want to resent this sport because it took away from something else.

Its about a mile walk from my house to the high school track.  The track was comfortable to me – there would be no one else there, the surface was a bit softer than concrete and walking there would be a good long warmup.  Seemed like a pretty good plan, so one Sunday morning, I laced up my old running shoes (from my last attempt) and walked on down to the high school track.  With Robert in my ears, I completed my first couch-to-5k workout and then walked back home.  Later that day, we met some friends at PLRA for a ride.  It was a very successful day.

The following Tuesday, I woke up an hour early and walked down to the high school track for my second couch-to-5k workout.  I set myself a goal – if I continued with the program for 4 weeks, I could go to Hansen’s and buy new shoes.  I was so afraid that if I missed a single day of the program, I’d fall behind and quit that I kept going, 3 days a week (Sun, Tues, Thurs) and never missed a day.  I got my new shoes, finished the program and my first 5k race.  Yep, that’s right.  I ran a 5k race in August.  I had not started out with the intention of ever running a race, but I’m so glad I did.  It was scary, and amazing, and fun.  I was hooked.

Photo by Erik Mile

About 6 weeks later, I did a 10k at the Detroit Zoo.  I finished within my time goal, but bonked a little before mile 5, threw up in someone’s driveway and sort of walked/ran to the finish line.  It wasn’t pretty, but I finished.

Photo by Nick Shue

So yeah – I went from “I am NOT a runner” to “I finished a 10k race” in just about 5 months.  And I haven’t looked back since.  Running has helped me to love exercise.  It has made me stronger on the bike (no kidding, I rode a fraction of the previous year’s mileage last year and was stronger and faster than ever before).  Running has taught me that I can dig deeper than I ever did before.

In a couple of weeks, I start training for a half-marathon.  Yep.  I will complete a half-marathon just about a year after I started my couch-to-5k program.  I guess I was wrong.  Maybe I am a runner after all.

For as long as I can remember, I’ve hated running.

When I was in high school and on the softball team, I just about cried at the beginning and end of each practice when we had to run the bases for a given amount of time.  Or worse – running laps around the gym.  I thought I had ankle problems at the time, since that’s what seemed to hurt most.  I taped my ankles for 4 years in high school to get me around the bases and catching flies in the outfield.  And declared that I was not a runner.

During my college years, I worked with a girl who ran for fitness and I started to get intrigued.  See, I was a swimmer.  My sport involved bathing suits, finding a pool, being wet and chlorinated; swimming is not ‘portable’.  You can’t count on it for fitness if you travel or have a hectic life.  Running seemed like the kind of thing that could go with you anywhere.  I loved the idea.  But *sigh* I was not a runner.  I’d already decided that.

When my sister began running, she urged me to give it a try.  She suggested I try a walk/run kind of thing (run for a min, walk for a min or two; repeat).  It made sense, so I gave it a shot.  And I hated it.  I would have to walk for 3-5 minutes between each run and could only do a few runs.  Every muscle in the lower half of my body was screaming and I could barely breathe.  I hated every second of it.  So I gave up.  And declared that I was not a runner.

But I never stopped thinking about running.  And I did try various walk/run and couch-to-5k type programs over the years.  I tried and failed several times.  But (I kid you not), running was in my head so deep that I often dreamt of just running for miles and miles.  Yet, I continued to declare that I was Just. Not. A. Runner.

I was defeated by running.  Which was OK, because I became a Mountain Biker instead.  And was immediately in love!  Mountain Biking is crazy fun and amazingly hard.  Mountain Biking makes me feel incredible.  Its adrenaline and endorphins.  And most of all .. It is an escape from suburban-corporate-daily-life and gets me out and into the woods.  *dreamy sigh*

Last winter, when we started loosing weight and following a trend-line on the Physics Diet, I noticed that when I did some form of cardio 6 days per week, I lost much more weight than those weeks when I only did cardio 2-3 days a week.  When we came back from our mid-winter vacation in the Caribbean, trainer season was over and it was time to think about the outside world again.  I knew I needed to exercise 6 days per week, but I just didn’t think I could get myself on the bike that often without feeling resentment, rather than love.  I did not want to be so tied to my bike for fitness that I didn’t want to ride it for fun.

Nick had started focusing on training for the Lumberjack 100, and I really didn’t feel like tagging along on most of those rides.  I was on my own, and looking for something to supplement biking.  We had a gym membership at a little gym close by, but I never liked that place much, or gyms in general.  Also – I really prefer things I can do outside.  I dug up a Couch-to-5k podcast that I’d found a few years ago and sync’d it to my iPhone.

There was no way around it; the fates were telling me, it was time to try this running thing again.

to be continued …