I said I want to run a 5K and this weird switch happened in my head. Despite all the things I fear and all my insecurities, I don’t give a shit about any of that right now. I just want to run this 5K.
Hell, I don’t even care about running the 5K. I want to train for a 5K. I want to live this process and embrace it so fully, I feel consumed by it. My intention is for there to be nothing I’ve ever committed to more than this, apart from my family.
Last night I said I want this. It would have been so easy today to waylay it. To wait because I didn’t have the perfect training plan yet. Or the perfect running shoes. Or because R was going to run with me, but had to work on chem instead. All I needed was one tiny excuse to not get my ass out there.
But I’m a runner damnit and I will show up for myself. So I went out to the field wearing jeans and Chucks and I embraced that shit. I ignored the story in my head that the neighbors thought I looked stupid. I told myself instead the story of future Jill. Whose neighbors revere her for kicking ass every. damn. day.
My loose plan was to train for 30 minutes–15 second run/45 second walk. Rinse. Lather. Repeat. I ran around and played ball with S all last week! I could do this easy peasy, right?
Ha. That was unreasonably optimistic… 4 minutes in and I was dying and calling it quits in my head.
I thought about Dave Hollis though. And Rachel. I thought about my privilege and my commitment. Maybe I didn’t train for the 30 minutes I expected to. But I trained for 15. And that 15 is fucking huge! It is everything. It is ten more than my body thought it could give.
And I felt like I was fucking glowing after! I had fought for every second of that run and every cell in my body knew it. It was electric.
I will hold onto this as my first training experience and it will always be the story of how I started running after a lifetime of wishing.