I Hated Running. So, I Ran a Half Marathon.
For over a decade, I swam and played softball. I loved the sports for who they were. But, a huge part of why I chose them was that I would, for the most part, avoid having to run.
My entire life I hated running. I was mortified by how red and out of breath I got compared to my peers. And because I refused to be bad at anything, I avoided running as much as possible.
Once COVID hit and organized sports were put on hold, I didn’t know what to do with myself. A few times throughout quarantine I found myself with so much pent-up anxiety and energy that I could think of nothing else to do but run. And still, I hated it. I was embarrassed to share the distance I ran or how long it took with even my closest friends and family.
Like I said, I am not good at being bad. Even as I slowly began to improve on the runs that I was only brave enough to endure every few months, nothing was good enough for the standards I held myself to. I would tell my friends my afternoon run wasn’t good because I “only” ran 3 miles - even when I could barely hit a mile a few months prior.
My freshman year of college was the first time since elementary school that I wasn’t being told by my coaches when and how to work out. When I found myself at the campus gym for the first time I looked around and realized I didn’t know how to exercise when there wasn’t someone telling me what to do. So, I decided to do what I thought would make me look the least dumb and get on a treadmill.
By sophomore year running had become an outlet for excess anxiety. When I felt overwhelmed I began craving the burn of a run instead of wallowing in my worries. As my friends began their own running journeys, I created a goal for us - by the spring we were going to run a 5k, our first official race.
I was ready to go on with this plan. Running in front of hundreds of people felt far out of my comfort zone. Yet, the distance being only 3.2 miles felt attainable - a challenge I knew I could do. And then my best friend just had to go and tell us she wanted to do a half marathon.
No part of me wanted to add an extra 10 miles to my existing race plan. It actually sounded like my personal hell. While I had learned to not completely hate running, I was far from loving it. But, no matter how miserable this sounded to me, the idea that I would back down from a challenge, especially one introduced by someone who had been running for far less time than I had, sounded worse.
Thus began a 14-week training plan which included four to five runs a week with early Saturday nights to prepare for long runs on Sunday mornings. Not to mention, the extensive physical exertion that ultimately resulted in a stress fracture in my toe, an inflamed hip, and persistent knee pain. It also ended with a medal and an overwhelming feeling of shock that I had actually done it. I, someone who avoided running like the plague for most of my life, ran a distance that less than 1% of Americans have.
If you haven’t caught on yet, this story isn’t about running. It’s about pushing yourself to try new things, even if you may be bad at them. The first time you try something you’ll rarely knock it out of the park. That concept may have taken me 20 years to learn, but at least now I have a success story to show for it.
You heard it here first,
Kylie
