Obsessed

I found an obsession. 

In a million years I didn't think I would ever get obsessed with running. Wait, a billion years. 

Running and I have never been friends. We've been enemies since I can remember. Those mile runs in elementary school around the playground, playing soccer and the coach making us run a few laps around the field, running drills in basketball. "Fun runs" in jr high. So I picked swimming, a sport that didn't require any running. Until high school, when our team captains loved to torture us with runs. 

I think the farthest I ever ran and pushed myself in high school was a quarter mile. It was an "Indian run" that nearly made me throw up. 

I had knee problems in high school with swimming and so I didn't have to run anymore my senior year. I still worked hard at swimming and swam at state. But I was always so sad that I could never run.

My dad became obsessed with running in 2002 or so. His midlife crisis. Suddenly he was a trail runner and ran crazy distances. I thought he was crazy. I would mention it to friends and people I knew and they were amazed. Sometimes I even met people who read his blog and treated him like some sort of running celebrity.

In college I wanted to try running again. I signed up for the ROTC class and quickly learned that is was possible to throw up while you run. It was hard. I was embarrassed. So I bought a gym pass and tried to work out a couple more times a week in preparation for the Friday runs. I still couldn't do it and I knew I would fail the class, so I dropped out. I failed. It was depressing.

During nursing school, Annalie and I took up running for a bit but started out doing too much too soon and so I hurt my knees and stopped running. I had gotten to the point where I could say that I actually liked to run. But then it was too hard to start up again.

This last October, Annalie and I went to the Pony Express Trail 50 and 100 that my dad puts on. It was fun times camping and cheering. But we were sitting at the finish while people older than us were finishing 50 mile runs. It was inspiring to see how accomplished they felt afterwards and to see their determination. 

Annalie and I joked about running 50 next year. And in the middle of our joking it became a reality and the next week we laced up our shoes and headed out the door, running 45 second intervals to get us up to 10 minutes only four weeks later. 

Now that I have some specific goals and races in mind, like a 5K in a week and a half marathon in June. And of course, the 50 in October. I am obsessed with motivation for racing.

I live and breathe motivation. I'm not sure if its because I'm terrified of not accomplishing my goals. I really want this more than I've wanted anything in a long time. And failing is just not an option. I am not going to get this excited about something and start out with this much momentum and then quit or get set back or fail. I cannot do that. It would be the worst thing. 

I want to run. I want to keep running. I want to be a runner for good. This could be the best thing that has ever happened to me. It feels amazing.

So I'm obsessed. I have to be. I'm so happy at my progress and can't wait to keep going.