Wednesday, October 14, 2009
Running Five Minutes Straight
A friend of mine recently had a goal to run five-minutes straight. I'm proud of her. I think it's an admirable goal because running five minutes straight is exactly where I started out five years ago.
I remember the day clearly. I was at the gym walking my regular routine of two miles on a treadmill. I always thought that routine was good enough to stay fit. Anyway, that's what Oprah had said during one of her quests to achieve weight loss, and who questions Oprah? Then two women came by and jumped on the treadmills beside mine. They began running and talking, discussing kids and the daily grind. I about choked. They made it appear effortless. Silently, I admired them and wished I could run for five minutes straight. I wouldn't try it that night, but eventually I would reach my goal--and then create new ones.
My friend says she has been trying to run, but was afraid to look foolish. She said, "When you run, are you running RUNNING?" She motioned with exaggerated arms and legs to indicate what she thought "real" runners looked like. "Because I'm not doing that," she said. Then she slowed her motions to a near crawl. "I'm more like this."
"No," I said, nodding in agreement to her slowed pace. "Sometimes, I'm barely loping along." I burst out laughing, adding, "Sometimes, somebody WALKING passes me!"
Then I had to explain how someone walking passed me when I was running. It's a memory I'll never forget. Never mind that he was about twenty years older than I am on top of the fact that he was WALKING.
In August, I ran the America's Finest City Half Marathon with my daughter who was going away to college. It was her first half-marathon and she hadn't really trained for it, so we decided to take our time and just get through it. About halfway through, in the distance, we could see (much to our horror!) that there was an old man ahead of us...and he was WALKING! I think every marathoner has had this thought at some point in their running careers. It's that coming up on someone who...for lack of a better way to say it...shouldn't be ahead of you! That's how we felt!! How can someone walking have been ahead of us all this time? We spent the rest of the race passing him. Then he'd pass us. Again, we'd pass him, and so on.
I admitted this revelation to my new running friend as I expressed how every runner has to start somewhere, and even conditioned runners have those days where they feel like running five minutes straight would be a good day. Maybe they have an injury or a blister. I told her that fear of what she looks like shouldn't keep her indoors.
I recently received a reminder to purchase my half marathon photos. "Your photos are waiting for you!" the email subject line exclaimed. I went to view them and nearly fell off my chair laughing. There, at the final stretch of the race is the white-haired gentleman walking briskly...ahead of me and my daughter.
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