I was RUNNING

I’ve never been a runner. When I was 14 years old my friend Lan and I decided we were going to start running before school. We got up early, would meet halfway and start running. For the first week, we both huffed and puffed and didn’t get too far, but Lan assured me that it would get easier. And it did.

For her.

Week two and she was fine, while I still had to stop every two minutes to try and force air into my lungs. By week three I gave up. Running wasn’t my thing. It hurt my chest, I didn’t seem to improve from one week to the next, and it was embarrassing to make my friend stop every couple of minutes for “fat” little me to catch my breath.

(“Fat” little me would grow up to realize that she would probably never again get to the weight she was at 14 and maybe 130lbs wasn’t that big)

So I’ve pretty much gone 12 years thinking that I wasn’t a runner and would just have to find other ways to do cardio. But the nicer it gets outside, the more my body wants to get out there and run! So I decided that I was going to try it. At Xlbs and 26 years old, I was going to learn how to run.

$160 later, I had shiny new shoes and shiny new motivation. Wednesday morning came along and my ever-motivating cat Lola decided she wanted to cuddle/eat at 5:45am, so I thought “ehn, why not?” and went for my very first run.

Since I didn’t have enough time to devote to the Couch to 5K podcast I downloaded, I just did a quick 15 minutes – run 1 min, walk 2 mins, repeated a few times. It was hard, but it was great! I was RUNNING. I wanted to go fast and sprint my way around my block, but heard somewhere that I was supposed to run slowly and “at a pace where [I] could hold a conversation”. So I went slow and felt good, save for my chest feeling like it was going to explode. I’ve always thought that I had exercise-induced asthma, but countered it with the thought of “maybe you’re just fat, that’s why you have a hard time breathing when you get your heart rate up to max”.

Anyways, blah blah blah I felt great. I went running again this morning (run 1 min, walk 1.5 mins) and, again, felt great. My legs don’t really know what they’re doing, but I’m sure they’ll get the idea.

So far I’m motivated and enjoying it! This being said, I haven’t tried to run for longer than a minute…so who knows how I’ll feel in two weeks. I plan on following the C25K program starting this Sunday, so hopefully I will be able keep at it and it’ll get easier! If I’m still struggling in a few weeks, to the asthma clinic I go.

I really don't want to be fat girl with a puffer.