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I just ran 10 miles!  And I wasn’t even being chased.  This surprises me no end.  I even kind of liked it.  Kind of.  Which surprises me even more than the fact of having done it.  Granted, these miles were indoors on a treadmill so the purists can huff that they weren’t real road miles, not like it’s gonna be, not good realistic practice at all, but still I am proud of myself.  Why?  I’ve always hated running.  Not only do I have to train my legs for this but I’m having to retrain my mind as well.  Armed with an ipod full of fun, I beam at my fellow gym goers as I sweat.  I bat my eyelashes playfully at the eliptical machines and grin engagingly up at the skylight to convince myself that I’m runnin’ happy. With the right music, it’s not unpleasant.  I am finally finding the place where my body will just keep going without constant renegotiation about wheather or not it’s time yet to stop and find some mozzarella sticks.

I have told the wider world that I intend to run a marathon this year.  Usually, I’m just not that kind of a girl.  I’ve played hockey.  I’ve played hurling.  I’ve discovered the pleasures of backpacking, hiking, and biking but I never could understand those folks who think they want to go out and pound 26.2 miles of pavement or trails.  The people who know me best smile, try not to roll their eyes, and start trying to forget that I said such a silly thing so that they won’t have to embarrass me by remembering it later on when they presume I’d rather they didn’t, which I find to be the most hilarious part of all.  The only reason I told them in the first place was to leave myself no quarter.  If backing down means public humiliation, well darnit, maybe I really will keep moving a few more miles.

So why am I doing this?  Things are finally going pretty well for me.  I found myself considering the metaphorical hills I’ve climbed in life’s other arenas.  I started to worry that I’d stagnate now that I don’t have any obvious mountain before me.  Darnit, I’ve gotten good at throwing my all at something that looks insurmountable and I’m afraid that if I don’t keep doing it I just might forget how.  Did I really just say that?  On top of which, it started to seem like everyone else was doing it!  People I’d run into tangentially would remark upon the marathon they’d run or were about to.  I started to think, well geez, if she can do it, I might be able to, too…  I admit, too, the desire to see what I’ll look like, feel like, with a body that can do that sort of thing.  I’ll feel unstoppable, incredible, superhuman!  I hope.  Maybe I’ll just feel like crawling into a hole and dying when it’s all said and done.  I guess that part remains to be seen.

So we shall see.  10 miles is not a marathon, not even half of one, but it’s more than I’ve ever run before.  I know I’ll be ready for my first half marathon in a month and a half or so.  We’ll see how long it takes me to be ready to go whole hog.  Already I can feel myself inhabiting a body edging towards that leaner distance runner aesthetic.  I love the way I feel when I wake up the morning after a run, my whole body full of a different kind of energy than I seem to find any other way.  I’m starting to understand why they do it.  I’m getting a glimpse of how it is that people come to love running.  It’s seeming just this side of possible that I might yet turn out to be one of them.- DG