Well, for the better part of this year I have been doing something that, for as long as I can remember I have hated. Now some of you might think that hate is a strong word. Well, you know what is another strong word? Super-hate.
Yeah, that sounds about right.
I have never liked running. That is just the way it is. I think it comes from my experience as a pre - teen/teen. I was in the Civil Air Patrol - something I absolutely loved by the way - and to go up in rank you had to take both a written and a physical test. The physical test always ended with running a mile. The higher the rank, the lower the time you had to finish and pass. For years, that was running for me: Running around a track, going against the clock about to puke my lungs out (at least that is how I felt). I would hear stories of people who, believe it or not, actually ran regularly and I could not even conceive how they could do it. "That guy runs 5 miles a day." someone would say. I would think of the effort it took me to run one mile and think that it took some sort of super-human to do something like that.
Of course, it didn't help that I was fat. (Still am)
The fact that I am overweight has not helped my beliefs about running over the years. I have tried many things to lose weight and not succeeded. Every kind of exercise you can imagine and every kind of diet. Every time I have looked at my options for "starting over" with weight loss, running was always at the bottom of the list if on the list at all. It seemed logical to me. I mean, if you are going to exercise, it should be something you like. That way, you stick to it right? So running was out of the question. I hate running. I super-hate running.
So why am I running?
I watch The Biggest Loser regularly. Yes, I'm one of those fat people that love the show yet never seem to do anything about their own weight problem. Anyway, it has become sort of a tradition on the show for the finalists to run a marathon. Now, if running a mile was the worse thing I could wish my enemies you can imagine what I thought of a marathon. 26.2 miles... That's not, human. Travel 26.2 miles in any direction in this island of mine and you will end up on the other end. Or in the ocean. You need a car to travel that distance. Yet, there they went. The contestants I mean. No different (or lighter) than me, covering the fabled distance. If they can do it then, why couldn't I? However, that fact alone did not exactly push me to run. It took an iconic cartoon character to send me over the edge.
On my next post I will explain what I mean.
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