Becoming a Runner

I have always hated running. I always wanted to enjoy running, especially because I played sports that involved running (soccer, volleyball, softball, etc.). Running makes my lungs and legs hurt. I get bored really easily as well. I can’t run on a treadmill to save my life. I will get bored and run for maybe two minutes. I need a change of scenery in order to keep my mind off of running . It helps make the time go by quicker. 

With that being said, I have tried to become a runner in the past. I think it would be fun to compete in running. I am very competitive and I hate losing. I am not willing, though, to push myself hard enough to run as fast as I can in order to win. I will go through spurts of wanting to run and trying really hard to build up my stamina. Then, I decide it isn’t worth it and I quit. I usually lose the energy and the will to want to run, so I fall out of a habit. 

This past summer, I got into a really good routine of running and working out almost every day. At the beginning of summer, I decided to time my mile and work to get it down every time I ran. My mile time when I first began running was around 12 minutes. I wasn’t happy with this time, but I was honestly expecting a worse time than this. Every day I ran, I was able to shed a few seconds off of my time. I felt better each and every time that I ran. I finally got my time down to nine minutes flat. This was the best mile time I had run in years. I felt like I was making progress and I began to not hate running as much as I used to. 

Then, I stopped running. Life got busy with work and being tired and getting ready to move back to school for the fall semester. I didn’t run for close to a month and I felt really bad. I felt like all of the progress I had made was all for not. I didn’t feel like running because I knew that my time was going to increase again since I had lost a portion of my stamina that I had built up. I just moved back to school about two weeks ago and decided to incorporate running back into my schedule again. I ran my mile and my time was close to 11 minutes. I was pleasantly surprised and pretty relieved. I thought that the time I ran would discourage me enough to make me quit, but it did quite the opposite. It gave me the push I needed to continue to run and get better than I was the day before. I am excited to keep running and I am looking forward to seeing how I am able to progress over the next few months and even the next year.