I've always hated running. But I'm a pretty driven guy, and a couple days ago I pushed myself through a 1.25 mile run. The next day, I ran seven miles.
Even though I've been working out since August, running has been a major sticking point for me. I can do "static exercises" at levels that I never would have believed a few months ago, but I just couldn't muster myself to do significant distance running.
My run a few days ago, the 1.25 mile one, was typical. The ground is covered in snow and ice here, so I used a treadmill. As I ran, I set little goals for myself, thought about how much more I needed to do before I could stop, and did all sorts of calculations in my mind to figure out how much longer I'd have to run. I ran analytically.
The next day, inspired by one of Judge's posts, I decided I was going to run for seven miles. I'd never run four miles before, so I knew I had a steep challenge on my hands. In his post, Judge gave two extremely useful pieces of advice: run with music, and don't pay attention to how much farther you have to run.
The reason music is important is that it helps distract you: paying attention to how far you have to run is deadly. Running seven miles was probably easier for me than running about a seventh as far the day before: I wasn't constantly worrying about what I had to do.
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2 comments:
DUDE! I LOVE IT! I was doing fist pumps while reading this blog!!! That's awesome, keep it up! (My 3 lives in life = women, writing, and running)
Thanks for the positive feedback :). I have no idea how that got posted, though, since it's supposedly saved as a draft, but oh well. One of my favorite teachers used to say "you're never done writing, you just run out of time."
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