I never liked running. Although I could play hours of basketball or soccer, if I set out to go running, I would stop before even reaching a mile. I got bored quickly, kept on noticing how tired I was, and eventually gave up and found some other way to exercise like soccer — or a hamburger.
Even though I didn’t like running, I wanted to. There was something romantic about the sport. I was drawn to the simplicity, the minimal equipment necessary, and the lack of dependency on others (no need to wait around for a game of pickup). A lot of runners would tell me how great it was to run while traveling — seeing large parts of the city on foot, especially in the morning, provided context and a different view of the area.
Also, running was a sport that people were to do across their lifetimes. Perhaps its the lack of dependence on others, or the ability to go at your own pace, but I never met sixty year-old soccer or basketball players. The active people that age all seemed to be runners.
During my last weeks in China, feeling unhealthy from the pollution and my emaciated state, I decided it was time to suck it up and become a runner. I emailed some of my runner friends and asked for advice, realized I didn’t have running shoes, and made plans to start running as soon as I came back to the US.
I had a lot of downtime while traveling during those last few weeks in China — so I made up some ground rules for my running: Run every day to build and reinforce the habit, run before doing anything else (like checking email) to make sure it doesn’t get procrastinated away, and run for around a half-hour so it doesn’t take too much time (which could put the habit at risk).
My first runs were terrible, of course. The very first run lasted about twenty minutes, and I probably walked at least eight of those minutes. Luckily, most of my early runs were in Florida, which is drier and warmer than Seattle.
I’ve kept at it, although I’ve revised the rules — I quickly moved to six days a week (taking Sunday off), and now I run whenever I feel like it and the conditions are decent (three to four times a week). I rarely run in the mornings, because it’s usually better to wait until the afternoon when it’s 45, not 35, degrees out.
I’ll typically run between four and five miles, which takes a comfortable thirty to forty minutes, depending on terrain. The longest I’ve run was seven miles, with a mile-long walking break in the middle.
Finding good routes has been a bit of a pain, since Seattle has lots of steep hills — on the upside, I feel much faster when I run in Florida (where the highest point is mostly in Alabama and a hundred feet shorter than Capitol Hill).
My biggest piece of advice to those starting off: Track your progress. Take a note of how far you’re running, and how long it takes. It’ll be depressing at first, but it’s great to see how much you’ve improved since you started. If you’re into gadgets, a GPS tracker is nice to have (got mine for Christmas — thanks!). I’ve found the distance measurement to be accurate and consistent. My only complaint is that altitude readings are pretty much useless — when I ran around Green Lake (which is quite flat) it told me I ascended 500 feet on the first lap, and 360 feet on the second.
The forecast said rain, but it’s currently sunny outside. I’m off…
