There and Back Again, an Attempted Runner’s Tale

I’m overweight.  Seriously, one time, I compared my belly to my sister-in-law’s, and I won… she was 4-5 months pregnant at the time.  I know it.  I embrace it.  It’s part of who I am.  But….

I don’t necessarily want it to be a part of who I will be.

In the last three weeks, I have started exercising a little more regularly.  I found one of those silly couch to 5k plans.  It’s an app I downloaded on my iPhone.  I’m pretty sure it’s trying to kill me.  In Week 3, it has me running for 3 minutes.  It doesn’t sound like a very long time, but when the longest run that you’ve had in 10 years is from first to third in seminary softball, 3 minutes is a minor eternity.

I decided I was going to push myself and make it through.  It did it.  Twice.  And my body is rejecting it.  I’ve had nothing but pain in my calves and heels for over a week now.  I’m used to my heels hurting, they started doing that a year ago after we got our treadmill.  The calves… that’s new.

In fact, I got on the treadmill to workout on Tuesday, and it was like my entire lower body said, “No, sir!  You are not doing this to us again!”  I couldn’t even do 5 minutes of warm-ups before I decided to pack it in for the day.  So, now I’m at a crossroads.  It would be really easy to give up at this point.  I mean really, really easy.  After all, I can find better things to do with 30 minutes in the morning.  However…..

I’m not giving up just yet.  I’m going to switch plans to one that isn’t going to try to kill me.  I peeked ahead.  Week 4 has me doing 5 minute runs, and Week 5 has me doing a 20 minute run.  These people are out of their minds.  Couch to 5k my foot!

We’ll see how this goes.  I’m going to get back into it in a day or so (my legs still hurt from Saturday’s workout), and I will push through… because I’m that stubborn.  Seriously, ask my wife.