Have you ever thought you were done doing something – forever? Until… It turns out you weren’t?

I have.

Recently, a ping from my phone with one of those “Your Memories from This Day” photo notifications caught my attention more than usual. It reminded me that, exactly two-years ago that day, I had run my first 5K race:  In addition to having been my first, it was unique in other ways. For instance, it was also a virtual competition (because a little math will tell you that two-years-ago, it was 2020…)  Also, though, because according to every intention I had at that time, my first would also be my last.

A couple of decades (plus a few years) earlier, I’d competed in several 5K races as a walker.  But up until 2020, never as a runner.   

I must have been around fifteen when I took up walking for exercise.  To explain some of the motivation behind that would take a whole other story. I’ll save that for a chapter (or three!) in my someday-book, and for now, just cut to the part where walking somehow became an important part of my every day.  Through all phases of life; all seasons; I have just never wanted to stop.     

In the late 90’s, I ended up walking regularly with a small group of friends.  That’s when someone (not me!) suggested we all enter a 5K race together.  Prior to that, I had never done any organized competitive thing requiring the use of my body, and I distinctly remember feeling like I had no business trying to do it then! Maybe it was encouragement - maybe it was peer pressure - but one way or the other, I ended up reluctantly agreeing to try it.

I still so clearly recall that chilly March morning:  It felt too early, and my nerves seemed determined to remind me that by showing up here, I’d made a terrible mistake.  I remember feeling like I hadn’t even had time to fully understand what was happening before, suddenly, there I was:  Crammed squarely – and tightly – into the center of a pack of other walkers who surely knew how to do this better than I did.  Then, suddenly - taking off! (In what felt like a chaotic panic.) Because they all did…

My next, clearest memory is of feeling like it would never end.

Alas, as all things tend to do, it did eventually end.

I could not have been more surprised when the results showed my name near the top of my class. Hmm. Maybe I could do this after all…

As our little group kept on finding races that year, I discovered that - for someone who had never done anything competitive in her life – I felt pretty darn competitive. I learned which racers seemed impossible to beat, and to never underestimate the “older” ones (incidentally, much younger than I am now…) because they often smoked me!

I did my last race one sweaty late-July morning:  My husband, our baby daughter, and my parents had come to watch. That day, I finally managed to take the overall win among the walkers. I brought home a tall, shiny, green trophy with a gold “#1” on top and added it to the small collection of others I’d built since taking up walking 5K’s.  Prior to that, I’d never won a trophy for anything.  Not even participation. Granted, participation trophies weren’t a thing back then – but even if they had been – it wouldn’t have helped me.  Because I’d never even dared try to participate.  In anything. That overall win felt like checking the box on a goal I hadn’t even dared to admit I’d set.  Because I probably never really believed it was even possible for me.  I decided to quit while I was ahead. Real Life went on. I never stopped walking, but I also never raced again.      

Until… over 20-years later, the e-mail invitation to a virtual 5K showed up in my inbox.

For some reason? That sounded like fun again!

The next thing I knew, I was clicking through the registration process only to discover that something looked different:  As I recalled, registration had always begun with checking a box designating myself either a walker or a runner. Here, though, that option did not exist.  Apparently, this event was only for runners. Maybe I’d grown more curious about my capabilities than I'd been 20-years earlier - or maybe I was drinking wine while I filled out the form - but somehow, I guess I decided I could become a runner - and I clicked “submit.”   

Had this been an in-person event, I feel certain that neither of those possible sources of courage could have made me do that. But the virtual aspect felt like a tiny safety net for exploring that curiosity...    

Regardless, I cannot overstate what a remarkable move this was for me:  Because up to that point, I’d gone through life believing I couldn’t run.  Or at least that I looked more ridiculous trying than my pride allowed me to risk.

I can look back now and clearly identify the roots of that belief – mostly, things other people said to me. (Believe me, getting into all that could fill more chapters in the book!)  Thinking back on such things hasn’t felt the greatest, but it has explained so much: 

It’s also freed me to believe that the present and the future can turn out to look very different than the past tried to tell me they could! 

I ended up loving preparing for and running that virtual race! It was far more about a creative way to support a worthy cause in a weird year than it was a major competition for serious runners. But still, the results left me slightly flabbergasted:  At 48-and-a-half-years-old, I ended up first female overall, and third runner overall. (Thanks, two-early-twenty-something-males-who-swooped-in-and-submitted-times-in the-very final hours...  Insert eyeroll and wink emojis here!)

Nobody saw me do it. Very few people even knew that I had. But I knew that I had. And like that overall walker trophy – it felt really good to achieve something I hadn’t dared let myself imagine I could.      

Along the way, I also discovered that I just really like running.

But I’ve also lived enough life to have learned that, just because I like something, it doesn’t necessarily mean it’s good for me.  My husband’s new hip (which we certainly didn’t expect him to need at age fifty) was really brand-new at the time – and therefore very fresh in my mind.  As far as I’m concerned, one new hip in our house – ever – is more than enough… So, to take up running?  With all its extra impact on the joints? At that age? When walking had treated me kindly for all those years?  That just didn’t feel smart.

That one 5K was one more than I’d ever imagined myself running.  I’d take that and feel grateful for it.  One and done. I had been a runner. But now I was done. Forever.

Until, two-years later, when it turned out I wasn’t.

That’s when two kids I love asked me to run again.  For another good cause. With them.

They didn’t even have to talk me into it.

I had never planned to run again. But sometimes, plans need to change. More than all my reasons for having decided I “shouldn’t,” it mattered to me that they’d asked me to:  That they thought I could. 

That’s all it took.

As Forrest Gump would say:  Just like that - I felt like running again! 

So – At 50-and-a-half-years-old, not having run in two-years, I had exactly one month to prepare to run a real, in-person, 5K race. That felt intimidating on multiple levels.  But I tried to focus on what mattered most:  Doing this with them.  Not how I do.  But that I do. 

The first week, I started out by turning one mile of my daily walk into a run.  The difference between one mile and the 3.1 of a 5K felt real…  The next week, I did a mile and a half – maybe two.  Eventually, I worked up to running the whole 3.1 on Tuesdays and Saturdays.  Some days felt better than others. 

A month flew by. 

In that time, I began to remember one of the things I like most about running:  How clearly it helps me think. I realized more than ever how much of what I need mentally when training my body to run also applies to life.

I’ll share with you some of what I learned this time around:    

I learned that even when I have every logical reason to decide against doing something – it only takes one reason that matters more to change my mind.

I learned that, almost always, the first mile feels awkward and messy. The second will feel smoother and more natural – but the only way to the second is through the first. The third means “only” one mile left. When it’s over and I look back, will I feel good about how I used it? 

I learned that my “best” will vary from day to day. If I let comparing the good to the bad go to my head, I’ll also let comparing the bad to the good go to my heart.  Rather than compare at all, I only need to do the best I can at running the miles before me on any given day. I’m working on learning to feel satisfied with knowing I’ve done that.  Period.

I learned to notice how the hard things I tend to dread also hold good:  A headwind intimidates me. The resistance it creates makes every breath and step feel harder to take. Yet it’s the exact same thing that I welcome when I need to cool off enough to keep going.  I don’t always have to like it, but I can acclimate to it.  If I do, everything will feel so much easier once it stills.  And it will, always, eventually still. Sometimes at the exact moment when I feel like, this time, I won’t make it through.  The slightest shift in the wind, change in degree of my direction, or even change of scenery can make all the difference I need to keep moving forward.

I learned that - on the days when I think I don’t feel like it – to do it anyway.  So often, the biggest accomplishment is just showing up – especially when it would feel easier not to.  

I learned that trying to balance proper hydration and my 50-year-old bladder and twice pre-eclamptic set of kidneys keeps things very interesting!  (And that I do get a little faster when I realize I have failed to effectively achieve that balance…)

I learned that the right pants matter – and that the wrong ones matter even more.  (That’s all I’ll say about that.)

I learned when to push, when to pace myself, and the difference between slowing down because I need to versus just because I want to. And to remember that slowing down is still moving forward.

I learned to work at focusing less on judgement, and more on gratitude:  To remember to be thankful for the problems I don’t have on a given day; and that, even on my worst day, I still have a body that can move – and a heart and mind willing to try. 

I learned to save something for the last 10th of a mile.   

Finally, I learned how much I find physical training and faith to have in common. The discipline of making each a part of my life every day doesn’t automatically make the hard things easy.  But it does keep me better conditioned to find strength and endurance when I need it most.

Race week finally arrived.

I realized how grateful I felt for all I’d learned and gained throughout the process of training – especially when every plan I thought I’d had… changed. 

To be Continued…