I CAN Do It!

I'm always so jealous of PeopleWhoRun.  I know I'm not alone in this, as I have had friends say the same thing in conversation about the topic.  How awesome and freeing would it be to just wake up in the morning, pull on some lycra (sooooo glad the Spandex days are behind us...), tie my shoes, and head out the door on a run.  By myself.  Free to go wherever I want in those lovely pre-dawn hours when the dew glistens on the grass and the bunnies dare to cross the roads without fear of becoming statistics (is there even anyone who keeps stats on roadkill?).  I live a few blocks from a lake with a path around a portion of it, and I live almost beside the bike trail that winds through Northern Virginia from Purcellville all the way to Mount Vernon. 

PeopleWhoRun make it look so effortless, and I can only assume how healthy and perfect their bodies must be.  I always assumed I couldn't run.  I may actually have been just making excuses for my lack of desire to exert myself, and even worse...sweat!!  I said that I had poor core strength, that I didn't have the stamina, that I was too tall and my limbs too spindly and uncoordinated.  Sure, maybe those are all true, but I'm learning that those are all things that can be overcome.

I CAN do it!!  Like the Little Engine that Could...I think I can I think I can I think I can... 

There's so much riding on mindset.  Last summer, I decided to get off my slowly-sagging buttocks and drag my sorry self to the gym.  Our HOA has a fantastic facility less than a mile from my house, and it's all included in the price of our monthly HOA fees.  There really are no excuses for not doing it.  So I went 3 days a week at 5am from June to October, ending my reign as self-proclaimed Queen-of-Sticking-With-It when the weather began to change.  There is nothing worse than getting up at the cold, dark time of 4:50am, shivering on the way out the door to the car, working out, then coming home in the same cold, dark dreariness.  Seriously, the elliptical just wasn't worth it.

So, terrified to actually have to get into a bathing suit again this year, terrified that my 25th (gasp!!) high school reunion is in 2 weeks, terrified that if I don't act again now I may miss my window of opportunity to correct all the high-calorie wrongs I'd done to my 40-something body since last October, I knew I had to try again.  And this time I was going to give the elliptical the old heave-ho and go for the Big-Time.  The machine that all those awesome PeopleWhoRun are made of.  The Treadmill.  Inspired by a friend on Facebook to get fit, and thinking just how freaking cool it would be if I actually ran (okay, jogged) in a 5k one day, I have now begun the process of turning these rubbery (and rather flabby) sticks called my legs into lean, mean machines.  Without bionics, thankyouverymuch.

I'm at the end of my 2nd week of this now, and am amazed at what I've gotten my body to do.  I start out with some really fast, strenuous walking for a mile, then begin the run (yes, yes, okay, fast jog).  I've worked my way up to 1 1/2 miles of that, and then do crunches and hip abduction exercises.  If the ability to squeeze my shirt out when I'm done is any indication of effort, I'm doing pretty darn well.

I just need to get to the point where it's all habit.  The point at which I can take it up a notch with minimal effort, at which I can feel confident that neither wind nor rain nor dark of morning hours can deter me from my mission.  The 30+ "likes" on my Facebook post about my run on Wednesday morning really, really made me feel good, so if you were one of those "likes," thank you!  All inspiration and motivation are appreciated, and I'll take it wherever I can get it.

Okay, off to have my bowl of cereal...

(Don't forget to leave a comment on my previous post for a chance to win a breakfast gift pack!)