It seems like every fall, I go through a phase where I really feel like I should be a runner. Actually, let’s start this by saying I am not a runner by any stretch of the imagination. I was a competitive gymnast for a while, but the only running you do in gymnastics is on vault, which is really more like sprinting anyway. I am not built like a runner and I don’t enjoy it very much.
And yet, every fall something in me tells me I should start running. Slowly, of course, just like Doctor Mama says. (Sometimes I get really ambitious and I think I’ll take up Couch to 5k.)
I actually went through with the running attempt, twice, following Doctor Mama’s advice. The first time, I went out for a run and made it FIFTEEN WHOLE MINUTES before nearly having an exercise-induced asthma attack and giving up. The second time I tried, I made it eleven minutes and was nearing the asthma threshold again so I stopped. I didn’t feel confident enough to try it again.
I don’t know what I’m supposed to bring on my run – my phone? keys? id? – and I don’t know where to put the stuff I do bring or how to dress appropriately for weather/exertion. I often feel like people are staring at me because of it. My boobs are so huge that it takes at least two bras (one normal, one sports bra) to reign them in to an acceptable degree. I have proper shoes (from a running store of good repute, even) but that’s practically my only item in the “pro” column for running.
This year, the urge to run is hitting me a bit later, like now-ish. Part of my problem now (besides the above) is finding a suitable place to run. I like to have my path planned out ahead of time, but there aren’t very many decent sidewalks here and the only track in the city belongs to the high school, and I doubt they’d like some random yahoo showing up unannounced to use it. In the dead of winter, no less. Where do you running people go in the snow if you live in a small town and don’t have a gym membership?!
Plus, there’s the childcare problem. I have two strollers, both sucky for different reasons, and neither of which will work in the snow. I only ever feel like running when Wesley is napping and I can’t very well leave him by himself.
I don’t even know where I’m going with this post; mostly it’s amusing to me that this same running urge happens every year in the fall, and then goes away again. Does that sort of thing happen to anybody else? It’s pretty much always in the fall, and the urge to go running comes and goes for a month or so and then leaves for another year.
