Why I Run

Making like Forrest Gump

If you had told high school me that, by the time I was 26, I'd be a regular runner, I'd have rolled my eyes. If you said that when I wasn't able to run for a year, I'd miss it like nobody's business, I'd laugh in your face.

Running was never my thing and there are a number of reasons for that. I was born pretty severely pigeon-toed, which made running long distances painful. That didn't get corrected until after my freshman year of high school, which made for a fun summer of two broken legs (in related news, I'm an accomplished cross-stitcher now and have used up my lifetime allotment for watching Maury Povich). At that point, I probably could have played sports, something I always liked to do, but the girl who mercilessly bullied me in elementary school played on multiple teams so I went back into my introverted shell and hid behind Little Debbie snack cakes.

It took until I was an adult to really start running, when one day I woke up sick of being overweight and out of shape. A friend had sold me on the benefits of the Couch to 5K program, which slowly builds a couch potato up to someone who can run 3 miles without stopping/collapsing/bleeding out the eyes over about two months. I went even slower than that, doing each week twice. I signed myself up for a road race a few months in the future so I'd have a deadline looming over me. That race - the Worcester Firefighters 6K - was the first of many and I soon had a hobby.

I won't say that I ever grew to LOVE running, as the process of running is long and painful and I spend most of it wishing I was watching TV or eating a sandwich or not running. But the feeling at the end is phenomenal. To get back to my house and say, "Hey, I just ran 5 miles!" is amazing. To finish a 5K with a new personal record makes me feel great.

Then I got pregnant.

Now, I know that there are women out there running marathons while being nine months pregnant, and to you, I say, "Gah, no." I've always been prone to side stitches and before I exited my first trimester, I was getting them regularly after less than a mile. So I did what I could with walking until I was put on bedrest.

My son's birth was complicated (as I've written about ad nauseum) and so I spent the two months after giving birth living in a hospital and subsisting on food purchased in the cafeteria, at the Au Bon Pain in the lobby and at the Bertucci's across the street. You know, health food. When we finally came home, I was trying to figure out caring for a newborn as a first-time parent, plus all the special care that he came with.

I returned to work in January and figured I could get back in the saddle then. After all, I work at a college with a brand-new gym and an indoor track. Lunchtime runs was how I got in shape to begin with. But the thing about colleges is...people LOVE LUNCH MEETINGS. A lot of times, the best only way to get people to attend something is to offer food. Frankly, I don't know where I'd meet one-on-one with anyone if we didn't have a Dunkin' Donuts on campus. And so during the semester, I'd say that two out of five workdays have something scheduled during lunch. Before, that wasn't such a huge deal since I could go to work early or stay late and go to the gym then, but with a little guy at home and a husband who needs to go to work himself, that option wasn't on the table.

BUT NOW classes are over. Most of the students are gone. Commencement is this weekend and my lunch meetings are dwindling to once every couple of weeks instead of every other day.

Going back to square one with my running is hard. It makes me sad that I can't do the thing that made me feel so good for so long. When I ran, I lost weight. I was toned. For the first time in my life, I didn't hate my body. Now I have closets and drawers of clothes that don't fit me anymore. I tried to run a (thankfully untimed) 5K a couple of weeks ago with my friends and felt bad when they had to slow their own pace to let me keep up with them. I used to be pretty good. Not first-place good, but more people finished after me than before.

Today I ran 3 miles in 32:27, a good six minutes slower than I was once able. That's OK. It would be crazy to think I would be back where I was a year and a half ago. I'm just happy that I have a chance to try.