Why I love running

Welcome to my first ever blog! I wanted to create a space that I could update everyone on my marathon training progress, so here it is!

So let's start from the very beginning...

Ever since I can remember, I played a sport. Being part of a team and going to practices and games was a way of life for me for quite some time. However, never in my time as an athlete did I ever think of running as something enjoyable. In high school, I thought cross country runners were the weirdest kids ever. Who would actually choose to participate in an activity that would require you to run miles upon miles? For me, running consisted of sprinting drills on the basketball court or field hockey field when someone missed a foul shot in practice or we weren't working hard enough according to the coaches' standards. The world 'mile' never corresponded with my exercise regime.

Of course, as with all of us, high school ended and thus, my career as an athlete. To stay in shape, I attempted to start running. I hated it. I forced myself to do it. It was tedious, it was painful, but I had to do something that kept me moving.

People always say to me, I can't run, I've tried and I just hate it. I always laugh. Running, for most people, takes practice. I think it was a good couple of years before I realized that I kind of enjoyed it, at least, I thought it was a bearable form of exercise. Running/working out takes discipline and effort. It is an acquired love affair, at least for most of us-the sane ones. As my distances slowly creeped up and the more I did it, I don't think I was even starting to love it, but I started to feel the challenge. The challenge of, well if I got this far, let's try to go a little further next time. Soon the days when I didn't run felt a little empty. Last year, when I had only basic cable, sitting in my studio apartment with nothing to do, I watched The Ironman race on TV. That afternoon, as I watched an 89 year old nun complete her 20th Ironman, a 66 year old father who pushed his 44 year old son with cerebral palsy through the race,and a man with prosthetic legs running, I realized I could do it. How could I not? Here I was with two healthy legs, a healthy heart, it would be selfish not to push myself. I'll start small. I'll run a marathon. Clearly, I need to rethink my definition of small.

It was a perfect solution. Running, just as any form of exercise, gets very boring for me. Especially when I was an athlete used to having a goal in mind. Building up to a marathon would be a great goal in mind to push myself. So, I knew I wanted to run a marathon, but I just didn't know when. Running buddies help this whole next equation, especially when you are 23 and single! Marathon training takes discipline and well, social events have to take backseats. So over the next year, I began running more regularly. Finally, one day, one of my best friends in DC Annie, got me on board for the Virginia Beach Half Marathon. I would like to say from there,the rest was history. If I were to say when I fell in love with running, officially, it would be this past summer when I trained for the half marathon. Suddenly, running felt like me. I was a member of a new club, or cult depending on how you look at it, and it just felt great.

Here I am, a good 6 years since I started running for exercise, hating every moment of it, and I am in love with it. You get me started, and clearly, I can't stop talking about it. I find myself in social situations with non-runners, and people ask me about running, and 15 minutes later, I experience an out of body experience. I see my lips moving, I hear the words 'Gu' and 'PR pace' coming out of my mouth, and I want to stop, but I can't! I promise, it's not just me. I think they cast a spell on you when you join the cult. We can't stop talking about it because we are trying constantly to recruit new members.

Running now is more than just a physical challenge to me. While the new mile markers are always a sense of accomplishment, the mental exercise it gives me is perhaps what I love the most. Since I've really accepted this as part of my life, I feel like running has become my personal form of zen or spirituality. You learn a lot about yourself when you are out on the road for hours by yourself, or with a running buddy. For those minutes or hours you are out on that road, you are forced to be in your own head, like it or not. I don't even run with music anymore-another practice I had to get used to. If I'm running with a buddy, it's nice to have conversations with them. If I am running alone, listening to my breath and my feet pounding on the sidewalk calms me. There are so many times I get so lost in my own thoughts that what I feel like minutes that have passed are really miles. Maybe that's what they mean by the runner's high. I can tell you, I've been there and it really is an awesome feeling. Especially because right before the high, you feel like you can't run a step further!

Running is a mental game. It's very much parallel to life. You are against yourself and yourself alone. Fighting the urges to stop, thinking you can't. Going past the pain, the boredom. One day you can go out and run ten miles and feel like you have another ten in you, and the next day you struggle through 1. It's defeating. But you have to rise above it and just keep going. I think the mental factor of running has made me a stronger person. Ever since I fully accepted myself as 'a runner' I just feel so much more balenced. Little mantras that I say to myself to get me through tough hill workouts, such as 'slow and steady wins the race,' suddenly come to me in my everyday life when I'm not running and I'm stressed out by life. There are so many times when I wish I had a pen and paper with me, because some of my best thoughts are while I'm running. I of course, forget them all when I stop. Everything in my life seems so much more clear and possible after a run.

In addition to my thoughts, the unbelievable views that I get running in this city are incredible. Whether I am running at sunrise, at sunset or mid-day, there are so many times that I close my eyes and try to take a mental picture to remember a particular setting because it is so breathtaking. Oftentimes, I wish that my family and friends could be with me to see some of the images I get to see when I'm on the road. If I tend to forget, as we all do from time to time, about how lucky I am to be where I am, it's those moments when I'm on the street looking at the monuments and I just so grateful.

Two weeks ago, fellow Team In Training member and one of my best friends Kerry, and I went to go see the movie 'Spirit of the Marathon.' It was a documentary film about 5 runners, 2 elite and 3 novice, training for the 2005 Chicago marathon. The film was only in theatres one night and was completely sold out coast to coast, filled with runners. It was incredible to sit in a theatre with complete strangers and feel as though they were friends because they 'got' what running was. For as incredible as it was to sit there with people who understood how you felt, I wished that my friends and family could see it so they could glimpse some of the emotions that I feel for this sport. One of my favorite parts of the movie said, the marathon is so unique because it is the one sport that you are experiencing the same emotions and struggles along the way with thousands of others. That's awesome. It is pretty incredible to be involved in something that is very isolating, yet so connected to so many other people.

There are so many times when I'm out on the street doing my usual stream of thoughts, and I think, 'how in the hell did I get myself into this?!' But the thought quickly disappears. I don't know how this all happened, but I am a runner. You can call me crazy, but I don't care. I will proabably try to recruit you repeatedly to the cult. You tell me, but Sarah, I can't because of "x, y and z" and I will tell you a story of a guy who lost both his limbs and was out there running in a marathon. When I was little, my dad told me there is no such word as "can't." I have to remind myself of this probably every run I have and I experience that moment of self doubt. I CAN do this. You all can do this. That is perhaps one of the greatest things about it. The one thing about running, you don't have to be a superhero, or an athlete even, you just have to have the mental toughness and the positive I can do this attitude and you can do it. You don't have to be a superhero or an athlete, but you will feel like one.