Runner?

I started running this week. I think I may have sort of lost my mind. I hate running. HATE it. Always have. Yet I've always wanted to be a runner. I wanted to be that person who would get up and put a quick three miles in every morning before I went to work. Enjoy the solitude of an empty road or the hum of a treadmill. What a great way to start the day! I never really set my hopes too high on actually attaining my goal of being a runner considering that I lacked one key factor. You know, that whole desire to run part.

I never really got the whole idea of running for the sake of running. What am I running after? I only ever ran when I had to. When I was in high school and involved in sports, I would run when the coach told us to to run. Or when I was playing a game that required me to actually run after a ball. Then I can do it. I was running for something.

I'm not quite sure what it was that sparked a little flame in me last week to start running. I think it was a lot of things.

1.) Maybe it was the guilt of not using the treadmill that has been sitting in our office for, gosh, well, for a few years.

2.) I've lost weight lately, but I need a bit of a jump start. I've been at this a while now and I need something different. Call me fickle, but after about 8 months of Weight Watchers I was getting a little bored. It was time to finally add some exercise to the mix. A gym membership just isn't going to happen right now and workout videos? Oh boy, workout videos. I think the one thing that I hate more than running is doing a workout video. I can do it once and then I don't want to hear the same lady telling me to do the same thing again, and again, and again, day, after day, after day because I start to feel like Bill Murray in Groundhog day. (Ack! So many commas! I just threw a bunch in there because I don't really know what to do with that sentence.)

3.) I saw a friend on facebook doing the Couch to 5k program. I tucked that away in the back of my mind. If she can do it I can do it, right? I'd heard of it before and I finally looked it up. It was simple. Print out their training guide and do it. It's only three days a week. For the first week I only have to run for one minute intervals. Even I can do that. I like that it tells me exactly what to do-- I don't even have to think. It's like a coach yelling at me.

So here I am. Week 1, Day 2 of Couch to 5k. Way too early to call my self a runner, but at least I can call myself a person who ran today.