Born to run
Comments(2) It’s been exactly one year since I first took up the Couch-to-5K plan. In the past twelve months, I went from being someone who had never run more than a mile in her entire life to someone who managed to run a 10-mile race.
One month ago today, I was also able to finally achieve a longstanding goal and complete my first triathlon. It’s not uncommon to meet competitors who needed to learn one of the three triathlon sports by starting from scratch, despite years of training in some of the other disciplines. Some triathletes don’t really know how to swim when they start preparing to compete, and many have not been on bikes since childhood. I’m the rare specimen who could already bike and swim proficiently, but actually had to learn how to run as my third sport.
“What do you mean, learn to run?” people have asked. “Don’t you just, like, start…running?”
Not really. Not if you’re out of shape. Not if you’re injury-prone. Not if you’re not a natural. Not if you’re not sure. Sure, you can simply start running. But whether you manage to continue running, mile in and mile out, month after month, is another matter altogether.
These days, I’m still not a swift runner by any measure. Yet running makes me happy, in great part because I don’t have a particular talent for it. I spent so many years believing I was physically incapable of running — decades, actually — that I now find myself to be a surprisingly cheerful tortoise.
Who wouldn’t be, if they ran faster and farther than they ever did when they were 21 years old?
