My Only 10k Run
We’re coming up to the second anniversary of COVID-19 affecting our world and slowly creeping into year three. In the context of my life now, it seems really strange to look back on some of the goals I had set for myself when I started this list. There clearly was no sign of a pandemic back in 2018.
Even so, one of my pre-pandemic goals was running.
I’m not a natural runner. Never have been.
Getting better at running has always felt like an impossible feat for me to accomplish for several reasons. I’d be consistent for a while, running 1-2 times a week for several months. I’d miss a week or two of running because of work, travel, or life, and then it felt like I was back at square one and very far away from the elegant gazelle I aspired to be.
Even when I did run regularly I never actually enjoyed it. It was hard work to psych myself up to get dressed for a run in the first place, and then it was hard work while I was running, and then it was hard work to do all the necessary recovery activities like stretching, yoga, cross training. During the runs I would have to listen to loud, fast paced music to keep me going, and then worst thing that could ever happen to me was having the music run out or my device die.
As a side note, I started running during the heyday of the iPod Shuffle. I’m pretty sure I never would have picked it up sooner if I would have had to do it with a Walkman or Discman. Or with nothing at all. My iPod Shuffle would last for a couple of days, but when it broke and switched to using my iPhone as my iPod things got a little hairy.
Running anything more than 5km felt devastatingly excessive and difficult, and I seemed to have picked up running in my 20’s, at a time when the fitness fad and idolized sport for a healthy body and mind was marathon running. Everyone I knew seemed to be picking up running and following a 12 week marathon training programme.
Of course I tried.
Of course I failed.
I had a lot to learn about my body, about training, and about running and why I am not a natural born runner.
Running was never part of any sport I did as a kid, so I never had that “muscle memory” built into my body like a soccer or rugby player would have had. Teaching my body to run was super difficult when it liked just to walk or to swim or to lift weights.
Important to note: running is hard for fat people. And I was fat for the first half of my 20’s. Not like “cuddly” or “real women have curves” nonsense.
Fat.
I was fat.
It’s a lot of effort to move your body faster than a natural walking pace when you have 15 - 20kg of excess weight everywhere. Running makes everything hurt and my god, did my knees hurt after a run. This running business made me feel so old when my knees started aching.
For me, the absolute worst part about running was how utterly boring it was.
At least if it was going to be so much effort to move then the least running could be was interesting. Every run, at every part of my running journey requires me to focus my attention 100% on motivation, convincing myself to keep going. To keep putting one foot in front of the other, remembering to breathe, not huncing my shoulder, that I’m hitting the ground with the correct part of the foot.
So if I hate this activity so much, it is a totally legitimate question to ask why I kept at it for so long. Why I’ve kept it on my list of goals for so long. And why I’m considering picking it back up again.
I’ll tell you.
Intellectually I’m aware running in and of itself isn’t evil. My dislike for running started in school when my teachers, peers, and sports coaches all expected me to be a good runner because I was tall. My early years were spent in the water swimming and practicing Taekwondo and the fitness from those to running wasn’t exactly transferable. This was elementary school pressure and expectation.
In Junior High School (Middle school for Americans) we had to do a run twice a year called Hurder Hill. It wasn’t even 5k, but the point was to see if we improved from the beginning of the year to the end of the year. We never did any running training, never given any tips to run, but running itself was used as a fitness benchmark and it dawned on me as a 13 year old that running has always been used as a benchmark and I was doomed to fail for the rest of my life.
Running itself became less of a thing in high school, which was a blessing because I really started to gain weight during this time, and into College and University. Sports bras for top heavy and fat people weren’t really available during my teenage years and I became much more self-conscious about my body and hated doing anything regarding sport.
By the time I got to my 20’s I knew something had to change: my weight was touching the 200lbs mark and I was so unhappy. I hated myself so much. I didn’t start running, but made small changes to my diet and started walking and swimming regularly again. By this time La Senza had released a sports bra line that actually had some serious support for high impact sports. It was this alone that changed my life and running seemed like a real possibility at this point.
It wasn’t until after I met my ex-husband that I actually started to be interested in running. It seemed to come so easy and natural to him, and I thought this is why he was so slim. Turns out it wasn’t, he was just a whippet and was a natural born athlete. He was the kind of guy who saw results after two weeks of strength training if he stuck to a schedule. And this fact is related to why I also didn’t enjoy running like I could have.
The first ever running shoes I ever bought myself. It had space in the sole for the Nike+Run sensor that would sync up to the app on my phone. I felt so techie and ahead of my time at the time. It also helped with the motivation.
In the first few months of effort to start running regularly my ex was patient with me, running next to me and giving me words of encouragement when I felt my legs start to get heavy. But after a few months he started to get frustrated with me because I wasn’t making progress: still getting tired in the same part of the run, still not getting any faster, and still not able to run longer distances. I told him I was running on my own from the third month onwards so I wouldn’t have to listen to him put pressure on me when clearly I have started running at a different time in my life than his.
I very nearly gave up running all together at this point. I didn’t understand how my ex didn’t understand that I was fat and it was difficult. Wasn’t just getting out and making an attempt at running good enough? Why did I have to aim for running a 5k in under 30 minutes? Luckily I did find a “Couch to 5k” programme online and following that did keep me hanging onto running for the next little while.
And yes, I did run on my own from then on.
I ran a bit aimlessly for a while and I’m sure that if I hadn’t restarted Taekwondo and started competing regularly me and running would have broken up for good. Running seemed to have transferrable fitness for Taekwondo fitness and endurance. So I dragged myself through 2 to 3 runs a week and it actually got better. And I actually could see a difference in my weight with regular running. Motivating myself for runs got easier as well.
Even though the running got better, it still wasn’t smooth sailing. There were lots of hiccups between developing running injuries, Taekwondo injuries, going back to shift work, and getting divorced. Running became inconsistent again, more difficult, and my motivation dropped. My first housemate was into running, and somehow always found it easy to get back into, regardless of her fitness or physique.
She suggested we commit to an official run as a goal and I obliged. I didn’t have any better ideas. This is how I eventually committed to the Vitality 10k run in London for May 2018.
My training leading up to the event was a struggle and the run itself was terrible. But I’m still glad I did it: the route was amazing and I didn’t take it too seriously. Although the best part was that I got to hang out with my housemate and her then girlfriend (now wife), and see more of London than I did for the whole 5 years I spent living so close to London.
Housemate and I at the end of the 10k run in London, England 2018.
I was pretty proud of myself, actually. Because 10 years prior to this moment I would have never even thought I’d manage a 5k, nevermind a 10k run. I had come a long way from where I started, even if I never managed to become that elegant gazelle.
Looking back at this time of my life, I don’t think I appreciated how much freedom to plan I had. And I miss it, because training just isn’t the same without an end goal that I can plan for. The question remains, will I ever find the motivation to start running again? Will it ever become part of my healthy lifestyle?
