Baby Steps...all 2.5 miles worth

I hate to run.  I'm slow.  There's just no other way to explain it.  That's what I keep telling myself.

First day of softball tryouts during my freshman year of high school, Coach calls us into a huddle at the track and says "Go.  Run.  1 mile.  I'm timing you."  I had never run more than a lap around the bases, or "Poles," from one foul pole to the other, if we had an exceptionally bad game.  Certainly nothing that even resembled a mile.  My time was somewhere in the 11 minute range.  Afterwards she told us to stretch out and we were dismissed until the following day.  I started walking along the side of the football field back up to the main building when my legs cramped up and I collapsed near the boy's batting cages.  One of the boy's coaches (who also happened to be one of my best friend's older brother) came over to work the cramps out of my legs.

I didn't make the team that year.

And I certainly didn't run another mile, not until 3.5 years ago.  I was enjoying $1 Margaritas at one of our local watering holes with some friends and we were reminiscing about the days of college--walking around campus during the days, dancing in the bars at night.  We were all thin.  Now we had settled into desk jobs and the pounds were threatening.   I started talking with a friend of mine and we decided that since we lived in the same neighborhood, we would start running together.  Three months later we ran our first 5K.  A few months after that, we started dating, and a few months after that we stopped running altogether.  There come spurts when we decide to run, but it's always short lived on my part.  I keep saying that I hate to run.  I'm not a runner.  (But I was logging nearly 15 miles a week during our running peak.)

Part of the purpose of this year is to do things that I have avoided--for fear or for convenience.  I paid my entry fee into the Cajun Cup, a local 10K race on November 13.  I looked up 10K training schedules and planned the next 10 weeks accordingly.  And tonight I strapped on my running shoes and ran 2.5 miles.  Slowly.  But without stopping.  And I said I wasn't a runner.