24 January 2014

Blog Challenge Day 10: Memory

The first memory I had planned to write about was one of the most vivid memories of my childhood.  It also makes me sound like an egotistical, arrogant jerk.  In a nutshell, my first day of kindergarten I cried the whole way there.  Typical.  The teacher, who was used to this for obvious reasons, tried to calm me down by telling me all the fun stuff we'd be learning that year.  Which were all things I already knew.  This was the day I realized that many of the people around me are pretty dumb.

Hey, I sound a bit like a jerk anyway.  Oh, well.  Let's proceed to my second choice of topic.

Just over a year ago I began a running program called "Couch to 5K."  I was overweight, depressed (the dosage of meds I was on were 1/8 of what I take now, so basically they did almost nothing), and I had a dog who was going nuts because he didn't have enough opportunities to really burn off some energy.

I only followed the program for 5 or 6 weeks which was when the running times drastically increased and my asthma because a real problem.  So I began to run as much or as little as I felt like and at whatever speed didn't cause a severe asthma attack or cause pain in my left knee which isn't horrible, but isn't great either.

Admittedly there were times that I wouldn't run for a couple of months or so, then I would take it up again.  Each time I was further along stamina-wise, which was encouraging because I wasn't starting from scratch.  Last autumn I sprained my ankle and had to take 6 weeks off.  It was horribly frustrating, but I sucked it up, gained 12 pounds, and was very cranky.  Within a month of running I'd lost the weight again just in time for Foxtrot (my English pointer) to be diagnosed with terminal hemangiosarcoma.  I still ran, but only twice a week most of the time.  When I had to put him down exactly a month ago I didn't run for about two weeks.

But new running shoes, new ear buds (the sort that don't fall out of your ears), an armband for my iPhone, and Gatsby's impatience got me back out on the trails.  I was surprised at how easily I picked it back up again; I was more or less where I was a month prior.

Now Gats and I are back to running every other day which has over time become something we absolutely love doing together.

Yesterday the thought popped into my head while running that I bet I could run a 5k now!  That has been a goal of mine since I began running, when a two minutes jog had me out of breath.

The epiphany that immediately followed that was, "wait a minute, a 5k is only 3.1 miles!  I do that every other day!"  It is one of the best feelings in the world to not even realize how far you've come and then have it hit you like a ton of bricks!  I was so amazed and proud of myself.

So, who is down for running a 5k??  We can just run our own if there aren't any coming up in Tucson in the near future!  :)

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