I Am Not a Natural

I am not a natural runner.  In fact, years ago while I was playing tennis my freshman year of high school, I complained so much about running that my coach required me to write a 3-5 page paper on why running is good for physical conditioning for all athletic activities.  (insert eye roll)  I also remember that same year, at the end of the season, going to the tennis banquet where the seniors would “will” to the other players different tennis gifts, such as ‘the ability to hit the first serve every time’.  Do you know what they all “willed” to me?  Their leftover excuses to get out of running at the end of practice.  Seriously, I am not a natural runner.  I don’t have a runner’s body.  I don’t have a runner’s breathing.  I don’t have a runner’s grace.

But off and on throughout my adult life, I have tried to give running a go. (Off and on being the key words in that statement.)  It seems like a pretty simple way to exercise, doesn’t require a lot of equipment, and could help with physical, as well as emotional/mental, well-being.  About 13 years ago, when Scott began working toward becoming a chaplain in the military, I really tried to run with him as an encouragement to getting ready for the Army Physical Fitness Test.  Before he left for CHBOLC (CHaplain Basic Officer Leadership Course), we ran a 5K together…the longest distance I had ever run!  I was SO proud of myself, finishing with a pace less than a 12-minute mile!  In the years since then, I have had a love/hate relationship with running.  I love the exercise, but I hate the run.  I never felt like I was progressing, in distance or in speed, but I have kept at it, not necessarily with success but at least with some amount of perseverance…until 2017 that is…when something strange happened.

Back up a year to 2016 … While we were in Korea, a friend of mine asked if I would run a ½ marathon with her in the fall of 2016 (we never did), so I started “training” to be able to do this long distance run.  I had a plan developed by SmartCoach (no longer functioning without a paid subscription) and began following the plan regularly.  I had a running buddy/encourager and felt like I was on my way to breaking through the infamous “runner’s wall.”  Not so.  The first 3 months of training were geared toward getting me ready for a 10K in June (which I had actually completed successfully in Alaska in 2013) and I felt pretty good about my progress; however, when race day arrived, I felt as if I had never run before.  I could hardly breathe; I felt like I was running through molasses, and embarrassingly, I ended up walking the last 2 miles of the 6.2-mile race.  I was devastated to say the least.  I am not a quitter, and I really try not to fail.  But fail I did … at least in that attempt to run the 10K.

After that disastrous day and after finding out that the friend who originally invited me to try for the ½ marathon wasn’t planning to do it after all, I basically quit running and finished our last 6 months in Korea walking…granted, I was walking everywhere, but I was only walking.  When we arrived at Fort Hood in late December, Scott was still doing his regular runs, and while we were staying in the hotel on post, he noticed a running track just across the street and asked me to join him.  Here we go again (SMH)!  I did go out for a run with him, completed the 2-mile loop and was huffing and puffing my way back to the hotel room while he ran 2 more 2-mile loops (show off!).  A few weeks later, we moved into our new Fort Hood home, and two days later, Scott left to go to Alabama for a 3-month school.  While he was gone, I thought I would go back to the beginning.  I would start running again to try to help him out.  My plan was to find some 2 and 3-mile routes that he could run regularly when he returned in April, getting to know our neighborhood in the meantime.  At first, I ran Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays.  I was mapping out 2-mile runs and then one day in February, decided to see “how far is the chapel from here?”.   Turns out it is 1.5 miles to a good turn-around spot.  A week after that, I wanted to know how far it was to that track near the hotel…it’s a little over 2 miles from my house…so a 4-mile out and back.  A week after that, I decided to run to that track and then instead of turning around and coming home, I turned right and made my way home a different way.  When I got home and checked the route, I had run 7 miles!  Unbelievable!  I was tired, but I wasn’t dying.  I wasn’t even exhausted.  I was, however, SO PROUD of myself!  It was the best feeling!  I wasn’t really trying to go 7 miles.  I wasn’t even using an GPS/app to track the miles.  I only figured out how far I had gone when I got home and mapped it out on the computer.  The next week, I ran 8 miles on Monday…and the next week, I ran 9.  I had broken through the wall!  Throughout 2017, I ended up running four ½ marathons…one on the first Monday of each month, May, June, July, and August!  Words cannot even describe the feeling I have thinking about this transformation.  I truly believe the only thing that could explain it is God!  He did something with my body and my brain that made everything finally kick into place.

At the end of 2017, I decided to actually set a goal for 2018.  With a load of determination, I set my goal at 1,000 miles.  Remember the title of this thing?  I am not a natural runner.  1,000 miles?  I had worked for years to be able to run at all, and after just one year of any sort of successful attempt at running, I was going to shoot for 1,000 miles?  Really?  Yes, really.  I set out a plan of how many miles I would have to complete each week and decided where I would be able to give myself grace (I counted the 100 miles of hiking in Israel…not technically running, but 100 miles hiking in the wilderness of Israel? Grace…).

With this plan and these goals in mind, on January 2, 2018, I set out on my journey to 1,000 miles.  On October 14, I completed the journey!  

By December 31, 2018, I had logged 1,248 miles!  Unbelievable to a non-running girl like me!  But throughout the year, as I clocked mile after mile, it wasn’t the success of reaching those goals that kept me going.  It was all the lessons I was learning along the way, lessons about running and lessons about life.

So over the next few weeks, I am planning to share with you these lessons.  My prayer is that they will encourage and inspire you as you run (or walk) your own journey.