Running the race

This morning I ran in a 10K (6.2 miles) - as part of my training for running a half marathon in a couple of months, as well as, believe it or not, just for fun. Three years ago, even two years ago, I would never have even imagined running a half marathon, or a 10K, or even running at all. I used to run off and on in high school and college, but after college I stopped running and never anticipated taking it up again.

Now, I am a firm believer that nobody needs to run. There are many types of cardio/aerobic exercise which are just as effective as running and definitely easier on the body. Walking is surely the perfect exercise, and most people can effectively achieve fitness and weight loss by pursuing a walking program.

However, if you really want to run, and your body wants you to run (for example, people with knee problems probably should not be running), running is certainly an efficient method of cardio exercise. The body uses the same number of calories to walk a mile as it does to run a mile (about 100 calories per mile for a 150 pound person). But since running is faster than walking, you can burn more calories in the same period of time by running as by walking, or alternatively, you can cover a given distance in a much shorter time by running than you can by walking. In an hour of moderate walking you might walk about 3 miles; however, in an hour of moderate running you could run 6 miles, consuming twice as many calories as you did by walking the same hour.

As I said, after college I never planned to run again. I have always been a walker, and my sporadic exercise efforts usually involved walking (which I would do daily or frequently for a few months at a time, before lapsing again into inactivity). Walking, when I did it consistently, helped me get in better shape and lose some weight every time I took it up. (It was the stopping that was always my downfall.)

When I seriously began losing weight in the fall of 2004, I knew I would want and need to exercise, and I assumed I would walk. But with oncoming winter, dark evenings and bad weather, I put it off. In January of 2005 I fortuitously bought a (very lightly) used treadmill, and also joined the YMCA. I discovered that walking on the treadmill was great. I could listen to my music on headphones at the Y, or watch TV at home, and weather was not a problem. I soon began upping my walking workout by raising the incline on the treadmill and increasing my speed to faster walking. I did try to walk outside when I could, on weekends and in warmer weather, because it is still more interesting and I think that walking outdoors has functional fitness benefits that the artificial environment of the treadmill does not offer.

But a strange thing started to happen. My body started wanting to spring into a run. When I took the garbage out to the back alley, I spontaneously jogged back to the house. I started interspersing minutes of running into my treadmill walks. Soon the periods of running were longer than the walking - and by the beginning of 2006, if not sooner, I was running on the treadmill for an hour or more, several days a week.

But I still limited the running to the treadmill. When I went outside, I walked, often for miles, and I enjoyed it. I still had no intention of being an outdoor runner. After all, when I saw people running in the streets they never looked very happy, and sometimes they looked downright miserable!

It was a trip to England that turned me into an outdoor runner. There were no treadmills in England (at least not where I was), and although I got plenty of exercise by walking many hours a day, I was a little bit afraid that if I gave up the running entirely, I might not want to take it up again when I got home. I tested the water in Bath. I took a walk up one of the many long hills surrounding the city, and began running on the way down, letting gravity do the work for me. The next day I added some level streets to the downhill jog. Later in London, I ran several miles in Regents Park every morning, and loved it. (How could I not? It was Regents Park - it was London!)

Back home I resumed my treadmill running, until one day I picked up a flyer for the Race for the Cure at Starbucks. Suddenly I had a compulsion to run in this race, and on a whim, signed myself up. Before taking on the 5K I thought I needed to officially run at least 3.1 miles outside, so one Saturday I did - and my running life really began.

Since then I have run 5 to 6 miles several days a week, mostly outside whenever possible. Most of the time it has been in my town, but I also took my running on the road for several out-of-town and out-of-state trips. Including the Race for the Cure in June 2006, I have run in four 5K races and as of today, three 10K's. On the future docket is a 15K in March and the half-marathon in April. After that? We'll see.

The strange thing is, twenty years after I gave up running, I enjoy it more, do it better, and run longer distances than I ever did as a younger person. I suspect that this is because in my past running days I never ran further than three miles at a time, and I've discovered that I don't really get "in the zone" until I've been running at least three miles. Once I'm in the zone, I feel like I could run forever.

And when I'm running? I never look miserable. Sometimes I even smile! :)