Confessions Of A New Runner: To Race or Just Run?
Okay, so I’m not a new new runner. But I’m a runner starting over from scratch.
I used to run — 10 years ago.
I got started at the beginning of 2013, after losing 73 lbs. A coworker of mine was a runner, and she encouraged me. Over the next three years, I ended up running a fair number of races — a bunch of 10ks, two 15’s, and my one (and only) half in October 2014.
And then in December 2015, my mom died and I just…stopped (grief does strange things). The last race I’d run was a 10k in October of that year.
I remember doing a virtual race in January of 2016 and just crying on the treadmill at work as I ran. That’s when I think I mentally decided to hang up my runners.
Fast forward to this past summer — 7.5 years later. I was out for a walk on a beautiful start of a July evening listening to one of my fitness apps telling me that I can walk for the next 20 minutes. Or, if I wanted, even jog.
Jog? I thought. Can I? And then: why not, I’ll give it a go. I moved my body forward as slowly as humanly possible. Probably barely more than a shuffle than anything resembling a run. But I knew that I needed to take it really easy. I hadn’t run in many years. My body wasn’t used to it anymore. So I propelled myself as slowly as a turtle through…
