Running

One morning my wife was doing something at her computer and said across the room, "they're having a 5k here in town. Why don't you sign up?"

Five kilometers? Are you crazy? I've jogged to the mailbox and back on a rainy day, but...

How far is that in miles, anyhow?

You might get the impression from the foregoing that I was not a world class runner. Heck, why did I just use the past tense?

I decided to give it a try, and spent the last week of March and the month of April trying to get into shape. This was my killer regimen the first week: I would go to the park, which was about a mile. Since I couldn't keep up a run for more than 45 seconds without running out of breath, I would slow to a walk until I thought I could handle another short spurt of running. Run a little, walk a lot, run a little...

Later I found out that can be an actual technique for getting through long races. I don't use it. I run the whole time. But this is now. Back then I had a limited capacity and I also didn't want to have a heart attack.

I was in my late thirties and hadn't done any running as an adult. I didn't do a lot as a child either, because I was asthmatic. I was a fast little kid in short spurts, but those 600 yard dashes they had in elementary field day games--I bombed out on the first turn, wheezing like mad.

The typical thing for a person resolving to hit the gym in the new year is to work out really hard the first time and be really sore for a few days. I  didn't want to be that guy. I didn't push it very hard. It felt a little pathetic only going a short distance and breaking it into tiny little runs, but I reminded myself of an important lesson I'd learned in piano. You work a little every day, and eventually your capacity increases. You improve with time and continual effort. That's the secret: consistent work. It happened with the piano. Once I couldn't play chopsticks and several years later I was on stage with an orchestra playing a huge solo piece from memory. It didn't happen overnight.

By the third week I went to a different course. I had figured out that 5 kilometers was actually three miles, not two, which my vague concept of the metric system had led me to assume the first time (it's about half as many miles as kilometers, and go one direction or the other!). It was exactly one and a half miles from my house to the church where I worked. If I could run all the way there, touch the wall and come back in one straight run I'd have it.

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

That was me thinking how ridiculous it was to imagine running all that way in one fell swoop. They'd have to come along with a spatula and scoop me off the sidewalk!

Nevertheless, I tried running to church. I ran and walked, and once I got there I stopped to practice for a couple of hours. I was the organist, so it made sense. Then I'd run back home. One day I actually managed, for the first time, to leave the church running, and not slow to a walk all the way home.

That was a pretty good day. And the start of something bigger.