Week 13: Run

So, this weekend I’ll be running a 5K.

Yup, I really did just write that.  No one is more astonished than me.  If you had asked me a year ago if I could run a 5K I would have looked at you like you were nuts.  Me?  Run a 5K?  Seriously?  I weighed 344 pounds and could barely walk around the block, much less run anywhere.  Running was something that other people did, and not something that I would have even contemplated.  

And then a few months ago I had this moment.  I was on my daily walk and suddenly I had this gut feeling that the walking was no longer enough, that I wanted to run.  So I did.  I didn’t run for very long--four or five minutes at the most--but it felt good.  So I started to run for a few minutes every time I went for a walk.  And then two weeks later I was in the midst of one of those short running intervals when I suddenly said out loud “Someday, I want to run a marathon.”  

Wait, what???  Of course that was my inner dialogue trying to convince me it was a crazy idea.  You’ve got to be kidding.  You can’t run a marathon!  You can’t even run for more than four minutes at a time, and even that is pushing it!  And had it been a year ago, I would have listened to that voice.  But I’m not the same person I was then, and the idea just kept turning over and over in my head, and pretty soon the idea of running a marathon overshadowed that inner voice, and I knew that I wasn’t going to let that new dream go.

So, here I am, less than a week away from my first 5K.  I say “first” because I know I won’t be able to run that marathon right away.  It’s going to take a lot of training and several smaller 5 and 10 kilometer races and probably a few half marathons before I go for the big one.  But I’ve started to take the steps I need to reach that final race, and you can bet that I will enjoy every small victory between now and then.