21 minutes

21 minutes. That’s how long it took me to run two miles today. It was a long 21 minutes.

I was excited about going running today. It had been over a month since I went for my last real run. I did a few run/walk and hill intervals on the treadmill at home but I get too bored on the treadmill to run for an extended period of time. I decided I would only do two miles today, you know, too ease back into it.I walked up the hill to the TRU gym after my last class ended, purchased my month-long gym membership and headed to the indoor track. Two miles on the indoor track is 16 laps, not too bad considering I was doing 24 laps a month ago. It’s only a month right?

Wrong. “13,” I gasped as I rounded my third lap (I count backwards, I find it passes the time better than counting up). I can’t believe I’ve only done three laps. I wanted to quit, but I didn’t. Some sort of ‘senior walk’ thing had started and I had to zig-zag in and out of old people. You’d think they could stick to one or two lanes instead of staggering themselves across all six.

“Eight,” I said a little too loudly when I reached the half-way mark. Three old people looked at me funny. I kept on running, I’d made it half-way and there was no way I was going to stop now. My heart was pounding, my face was hot and red, I tried to focus and get into the meditative trance that made me love running laps in the first place. I started to zone out, I almost ran into a tall man wearing a red turtleneck and jeans, walking at a ridiculously slow pace. I snapped out of it and started huffing and puffing my way along again.

This was nothing like I remembered it. This was painful and hard. I was having trouble breathing and my shins hurt. Why did I think I could get into running? How could I possibly think I could run 500 miles this year?

“I’m never running again,” I thought.

“One!” I was almost there. One more lap to go and I was done. I could feel my pulse pounding in my neck, thump.thump.thump.thump. So fast. I picked up the pace, I wanted this run to be over. I sprinted the last half of my last lap like I always do, it felt good. Really good. I crossed the finish at a full-out sprint and slowed down to a jog, then a walk. I had a perma-grin on. I’d finished, I hadn’t died, man did it feel good. I walked a lap to cool down with the big grin still on my face. An old man was on the sidelines tying his shoes, he thought I was smiling at him and smiled back, I just smiled wider.

Now I remember why I was falling in love with running a month ago. It feels so damn good when you’re done. I only ran two miles today, that means if I want to achieve my goal of 500 miles this year I have 498 miles to go in 359 days. For the first 20 minutes of my run today I thought I’d never achieve that goal, during minute 21 I KNEW I would!

Tell me about something that you have a love/hate relationship with?