Maybe Running Isn't That Bad After All...

I'm sure many of you have heard me complain about running.  It's never been my favorite way to exercise and as far as transportation is concerned, there are much more efficient ways to get someplace.  Unfortunately, I'm pretty competitive and I've been hanging around runners.  After some friendly reminders of looming registration deadlines, my non-runner friend and I decided to sign up for the Marine Corps 10k this October.  When we signed up this past winter it seemed like we had forever to get in shape.  I was good about getting in two or three short runs a week in March/April-ish, but that slowed down to pretty much nothing until a few weeks after my July vacation.  To deal with my lack of motivation, I decided to figure out what it was about running that I didn't like.

Reason #1: Shoes
Pretty much the only equipment that running requires is shoes.  As you may know, shoes are one of the few things in the world that I really dislike.  When I would train in high school I'd always run barefoot; swimming is my ideal sport.  Thankfully I learned about Vibram FiveFingers a few years ago and they have become my go to keep-my-feet-out-of-a-surgeon's-hands tool (one time was more than enough).  Runners are advised to transition to FiveFingers slowly in order to give the feet time to strengthen.  My problem was the opposite; my feet and stride were fine to go barefoot, but I didn't have the strength to run more than a mile or two.

Reason #2: Never running for fun
This goes back to my high school field hockey days when we ran and ran and ran and the only thing that kept me running was the terror of dealing with Coach if I stopped.  I never had that experience with swimming or biking and I realized that to train for this 10k I needed a new approach to running.

After returning from vacation, I drew up a plan to address these two problems.  The shoe issue was pretty straight forward.  Since barefoot running is topic du jour, I figured I would have plenty of minimalist shoes to choose from that would give me enough support that I could build up mileage pretty quickly, but minimal enough that I didn't hate them.  However, my tiny feet limited my options to a single pair in stock at the shoe store.  Thankfully they've been great so far and I plan to race in them.  To deal with the running-for-fun problem I realized I just needed to go out and run.  It was pretty tough at first, but eventually I realized that I was kind of enjoying myself.  When I mentioned this to one of my runner friends, he strongly warned against the GPS watch.  Don't worry, I've already run into that problem :-)

Running has been okay for the past few weeks, but we'll see how the next two months go :-)