Turning wonder into trying…

Turning wonder into trying…

By the time I had found the Couch to 5K running plan, I had already spent quite a bit of time “thinking”.   Thinking about how hard it might be to run.  Thinking of every excuse why I shouldn’t  do it.  Thinking about my creaky knees.  Thinking about how my feet  hurt.  Thinking…thinking…..well, I’m here to tell you that as good as thinking is……thinking doesn’t make the scale move.    So I sat on my couch with my laptop and did a google search for  “learn to run a 5k” — and there it was — C25K.com.   I was amazed right off the bat by how I had to choose  the langauge for the training plan.  There were 28 other language choices besides English.  Ok, so I’ve traveled the world, I’m not mono-linguistic  But how impressed I was when I realized that there were people all around the world who had an “I wonder if I could learn to run?” moment JUST LIKE I HAD.    That was somehow comforting to me there on my couch in New Jersey.   I was setting out on a path that many others had taken, and I didn’t feel so alone anymore.  It’s also cool how my thoughts quickly moved from “I’m not alone”  to realizing….”hey, there’s a community of wanna-be runners out there, and I want IN”.  Kind of funny for someone who has been on the couch for so long, right?  When change happens, sometimes it happens FAST.   I think it harkens back to “waking up”.   I fought and delayed waking up juuust about a long as I possibly could.  But once I was awake, I wanted to go go go, so my weight could go go go away.  (LOL, been there too?)  Yeah, most of us have.

I had moved along the learning curve from DOUBT — to –> WONDER, and here I was ready to take the Leap of Faith into TRYING.  TRYING requires some work to set yourself up for success.  So I had to work on my brain some more, and work to change that “desire to get started” into “a committment to stick with it”  THEY ARE DIFFERENT THINGS!   I have to remind myself of that all the time.   So, I had to deal with something first.   I knew myself well enough that I KNEW I needed a promise….a promise FROM myself TO myself of one little HUGE thing.  [Right hand on heart, — Repeat Out Lout Diane — “no matter how hard this is,  YOU WILL NOT QUIT. ”    Now here came the hard part — Now promise yourself that you mean what you just said.

I printed the running plan, and made a schedule for myself.  I worked out which 3 days would be my running days, Sunday, Tuesday and Thursday.  I then added “running” into my Outlook Calendar typically early in the morning before work and blocked out the time — Yeah, I treated these appointments with myself with as much importance and respect as I would an appointment with anyone else.  Not to be broken, or forgotten!

Peter took me to Dicks Sporting Goods and I bought new Asics sneakers.  These were my running shoes — only to be worn when I was running.  This sounds silly, I know, but I will tell you that to this day, when I see those sneakers, I feel strong, I feel different than I do when I wear any others shoes or sneakers. Those sneakers are part of the New Me.  They are special, and they are a marker in my life that I’m on a path…..a path to a place where I respect myself, where I say positive things about myself, where I value myself.  Who knew an ordinary pair of sneakers could take on so much power, one mile at a time.

So all these baby steps played a role in setting me up to begin TRYING.  TRYING to be different today than I was yesterday.

Ciao for now … Diane

About Diane

Ciao! My name is Diane. I'm a wife, a mom, a working professional, and a Weight Watcher from New Jersey. I started blogging in 2011, at 45 years old, when I was training for my first Half Marathon at Rutgers on April 22, 2012. Since then, I've lost 80 pounds, completed my Half Marathon goal and gone on to train for and run my very first Full Marathon. On Jan 13, 2013, I ran the Disney Marathon in Orlando, Fl! What an incredible day. As the saying goes -- "The person who starts the race is not the same person who finishes the race." I am forever changed! So now we move on to the next phase of this journey! Come along. We're in this together!! Ciao for now!

One Response »

  1. I understand how important the running shoes are as compared to all other shoes in your possession. I have a pair of the Vibram “finger” shoes I wear to the gym. It started out as a lark. I saw someone else wearing them and decided I had to own a pair. Well, I now equate these “finger” shoes with vigor, energy, drive and power … all the all the attributes upon which I call whenever I reinvent myself at the gym. I wear these shoes when I “train.” Whenever I’m wearing these shoes I’m training. When I slip the shoes onto my foot, one toe at a time, finishing with my heel spilling in last, I feel the metamorphosis from Clark Kent to …

    I get it.

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