Learning to Run

Since I hit my teenage years I've cycled through a seasonal shift in body weight, putting on a few pounds over winter, when it's cold and I'm typically more sedentary, and then shedding those pounds (and more) during the summer when the temperatures skyrocket and I spend most days outdoors. But this winter, for some reason, my metabolism must have shifted. I did alright during early winter. I had my fieldwork stint through November and December, and muddled through January without issues.

Sometime around mid-February, however, things changed. I was overcome with a seemingly insatiable appetite. I was hungry. All. The. Time. Perhaps it was brought on by stress about graduate school applications, or a lower tolerance for working outdoors with the horses in frigid temperatures and biting winds. Possibly I was lazier than in previous years, taking advantage of my lack of a social outlet and my hours off by vegging out in front of the television and completely ignoring any semblance of exercise. Maybe it has to do with age. I'm honestly not sure. What I do know is that I could not seem to curb my appetite-- it bothered me nearly constantly, especially in the evenings-- and I ended up eating far more than I should have, on a regular basis.

As a result, I'm now around 8 pounds heavier than an acceptable weight for someone my size, and about 18 pounds heavier than what I see as my ideal weight. It crept up on me, slowly at first, and then more persistently, until one day I looked at myself in the mirror and realized that I was not where I needed (or wanted) to be. I no longer have the outlets for exercise I did in college-- the organized sports in which I used to participate during the school year are now out of the equation. There aren't great adult sport leagues in MHT, either.

Once the weather began to warm, I knew I needed to put in some effort to shed this extra weight. I started counting calories and paying better attention to my diet. More fruits, veggies, and protein, and fewer sugary snacks. With the onset of warmer weather, my crazy, inexplicably tormenting hunger seems to have abated. I no longer feel the gnawing emptiness I did throughout the winter that pushed me to eat more than I needed. And though I'm active almost constantly at work-- feeding, grooming, moving, and riding horses, shifting bales of hay, mucking stalls, etc.-- I've still been feeling out of shape. Finally, I decided to start running.

I hate running. HATE. Loathe. Absolutely despise. I ran track in 6th grade, and never wanted to do it again. I despised conditioning in the multitude of other sports I played simply because it involved running. But so many people love running, that I thought I must be missing out on something. I did some research, and read that many people dislike running because they try to do too much, too soon. They become winded too quickly and feel as if they can go no further, or become too sore to want to try again. The key, many articles informed me, was to start slow and work my way up to a regular running schedule.

I found a program called Couch to 5K, or C25K, a 9-week training session intended to take an individual from never having run at all to being able to run for thirty minutes, straight, or 5 km, by cycling through run/walk intervals three times weekly for half an hour. It seemed, to me, reasonable and feasible. I decided to give it a go.

I'm only in my third week now, but thus far I haven't hated it. I won't go as far to say that I've enjoyed it, but it has been easier than I imagined. Despite still having the additional weight to pack around, I haven't been sore since after the second run, and the lung congestion I often get after exercising has dissipated and no longer seems to be a problem. I have had moments where I'm loosely focused, and don't feel the strain at all-- I can almost imagine what some people must feel when they enter that zen-like state of concentration often talked about amongst avid runners.

Who knows how my opinion of running may change as I enter the later stages of the program and start increasing the intervals I run. Hopefully I'll be able to reach the end stage and be able to run for thirty minutes straight, or more. I'd really like to make a habit of it, and continue to run on a regular basis after moving to WCU. It's an easy, effective form of exercise that can be done anywhere, on any schedule. And maybe I'll actually be able to run a 5K someday.

Now if I could only get this damned extra weight off...