Trying

Have you ever really wanted to do something that just didn't come naturally for you?

I'm tackling that right now. I've always wanted to say I am a runner. I did track in high school, but I was more of a field person, I threw discus and shot put (not very well, but I tried!). I did run what we nick-named the "fat man's relay", which was the 4x100 relay and each of us throwers ran a leg of the race. Give me a short sprint and I can do a pretty good job, but I've never been good at running long distances.

Last year, I told myself that I was going to start running. I wanted to run a 5k that they have on July 4. As you may have guessed, that didn't happen. I kept saying, I'll run tomorrow, I'll start next week. And you know how that goes, it never happened.

Well, this year is going to be different. A group of ladies from my church starting doing the Running Mate 5k101. It really seemed to work for them, as many of them are self-proclaimed "non-runners". Seeing their success made me want to achieve my own. So I decided I was going to go for it!

Basically the Running Mate program walks you through preparing for a 5k. The first week you run 2 minutes and then do a recovery walk for 3 minutes. Each week you increase your running time and decrease your recovery time. You repeat the circuit multiple times. By week 8, you'll run for a full 30 minutes.

I'm on week 4 right now. I'm running 4 straight minutes and only walking for 1. The whole workout is about 33 minutes. I'm really excited to see where this running journey is going to take me, and I'll keep you updated as I prepare to run my first 5k!