Around Christmas time of this past year I met with a personal trainer at my gym. For those of you that didn’t have the pleasure of hearing about the episode, I will let you know that the session ended abruptly when I vomited 25 minutes into the workout. I would like to blame it on the trainer, a tiny specimen of a man undoubtedly suffering from ADHD, but realistically, it was likely due to me being plain old out of shape. At any rate, once I rinsed my mouth and sheepishly emerged from the bathroom the trainer said, “Girl, you need to work on your cardio. You need to start running.”
I loathe running, mainly because I’ve never been any good at it. I can jump on an elliptical machine and go for 45 minutes, but make me run and I am out of breath in a matter of seconds. Let’s be frank, I don’t exactly have long, lean, runner legs. It’s hard to toddle around on these short, stout limbs. But at the trainers urging, I decided to give it a try.
I started running for 3 minute intervals followed by 2 minutes of walking. I was only able to do this for a 20 minute stretch in the beginning. Little by little, my endurance has improved and yesterday I ran for 40 minutes straight! I literally wanted to cry, and who knows, maybe I was, but couldn’t distinguish between the tears and beads of sweat. My legs burned, my feet were blistered, and there was going to be no salvaging my hair, but I did it! It was an awesome feeling. So this is where I am at. I am not going to be running a marathon anytime soon, or purchasing a pair of those microscopic runner shorts, but I think I am going to try to stick with this. There are few greater feelings in the world than doing something hard and unbearable and still pulling through.
