The First Run

Running 1.5 miles took me 38 minutes. Needless to say, I wasn't running the entire time. Before we left the office, Jenn and I gave each other pep talks. We confirmed that this is a mind thing. Mind over matter and all that jazz. I repeated a trope that I read on a running blog sometime last year when I thought running was going to become my hobby: "The body does not tell the mind when to stop running; the mind tells the body how far it can run." So after class I drove along the route I had charted on GoogleMaps to get a visual and mentally prepare myself. While I was doing that I was on the phone with Dolores (my mom/foster mom/former legal guardian/very close friend/confidant/whatever you want to call her - we prefer to use the term Hedgehog, since it's more inclusive than any of those words). With every block I drove, I told her that my heart dropped deeper and deeper into my stomach. So maybe driving the route to prep myself was a terrible idea. I went home and located my MP3 player. Jenn said 1.5 miles is 3 or 4 songs, which made this whole thing seem a lot more doable. The battery was dead. I ransacked my underwear drawer and luckily one of the gadgets in there takes AAA batteries. I was ready. I told myself again that the mind is in charge here and took off running. I made it about 40 yards, if that, before I started to feel like I couldn't breathe. Mind is in charge. A few more paces and my side started to hurt. Seriously. I hadn't even gone a block yet and my side ached. Before the end of the block, I had slowed to a quick walk. I was determined. I started running again. Didn't take too long to convince myself that I had to stop and walk. Got mad at myself and started running again. This pattern repeated a few times and then I sat down on the bumper of someone's car and tried to cry. No tears came. I wanted them to. I wanted some sort of validation of the emotional and physical pain I had convinced myself I was feeling. But they didn't. It's like my body was saying, Oh really, Fat Girl? Now our physiological cues are valid and relevant to you? What happened to the mind being in charge, hmm? So I started moving again and made a mental note to scourge my body for its betrayal when I was in a better position to do so. On second thought, a flashback to last night's meal and the admission that I've been that sort of unkind to my body for many, many years makes me think a scourging session may not be in order. I made it to the end of the .72 mile route I had mapped out and back. It's been 20 minutes since I walked in the door and I'm just now starting to catch my breath. There are some obvious things I can do to ward off this kind of pain in the future. More protein and more frequent meals, for starters. I'm sure the calories from last night's grease and beer fest wore off around 10am this morning, and since then I've eaten a cheese stick (reduced fat, which tastes like a salty pencil eraser - not recommended), a fruit cup and a muffin I stole from the conference room next to my desk, a brownie with nuts and frosting, and the Goldfish and diet coke I mentioned in the last post. Obviously, I will need to make some nutritional improvements if I am to survive the 7 week training program we've committed to.