I'm making myself EPIC...

Its been a while since I last blogged...actually its been many whiles!  Blogging doesn't rank high on the list of priorities when you are living a highly adventurous lifestyle...but I've started something new that i want to document.

Running.

Yes, I've started running.  The kid that always hated doing any kind of sprint or distance jog...any kind of running at all...I hated it, but something inside me has changed, and I think its for the better!

A couple of months ago I played softball with some friends in a tournament in town.  I was pumped about this because I haven't gotten to play softball for a few years since college.  Well, being pumped switched to being dissappointed!  We played three games, and the short version is I didn't perform as I remembered I could do years before.  I didn't get any good hits, and lets just say I think a snail could have went around the bases as fast as I did.  So what do you do when you think you're washed up and can't do anything anymore?  Give up?  Eat cake and watch tv?  I didn't...I started running.

The tournament was on Sunday, and I had rehearsal Monday night, so Tuesday I started running.  I had downloaded a podcast for the Couch to 5K program, and I wanted to just do something to be doing something again.  That's how you get it back, right?  You just jump in there and do it!  Well day one wasn't that bad, so even though it said to have a day of rest between runs, I thought "why not...you've got muscle somewhere hidden under all of this fat!"  Day two went pretty good, and I said to myself "Yeah, I can do this!"

Then the next day I woke up feeling like I had been hit by a truck...what happened to my amazingness???  Surely my body wouldn't be aching all over and chilling from two evenings of running!  Turns out I had the Flu.  I called in work the next three days and lost 7 pounds simply from not eating anything for about a week.  Maybe I should just stop eating to lose weight...no...bad idea. 

A few weeks went by while I recovered from the flu and I hadn't went running again.  Running twice made me get the flu...or so I was telling myself. 

Then something happened.  One of my former students, who has turned out to be a pretty great friend, was home from college for the summer.  She, my neighbor, and I had went walking a couple of times when she said something about counting calories to lose weight.  Out of nowhere I said "Lets start running."  I told her about the C25K program I had found online, and said I wanted a running buddy.  Walking doesn't really make me feel like I am exercising.  I mean, if I'm not drenched with sweat and look like I'm about to die, I don't feel like I've done anything!  So the next day, I was prepared with two mp3 players with the track downloaded, and told my new running buddy "hey, we're running today" when we met to walk again.  She was not dressed for running, but she did it with me.  After we did Day 1 of Week 1 we were both hot and sweaty, and I finally felt like I was doing something again. 

I had saw a quote that said "If not now, when?" This made me think I need to stop putting things off and start making a change.

Well, we are now on week six of this C25K program, and let me just say "I love running!"  I absolutely do!  I feel great after I run, and we actually ran 20 minutes the other day when we finished week 5!!!  Its amazing how much of this is a mental game with yourself!  I feel like I've grown so much over the month and a half that we have been doing this, and I know I wouldn't have been able to do this and keep going if it wasn't for having my running buddy!  Words cannot describe the gratitude I have for her sticking with me and running with me everystep of the way!  Someday we will look back at that life changing day we started running and be thankful.  Actually, I already have and am!

I wish I had blogged and captured this journey the whole entirety of it thus far, but better late than never!  It just feels great to be doing something again!  We're signed up to run our first 5K at the end of July, and I can't wait!  I know it will be hard, but we have come so far along this journey!  All I want to do is finish!  I know we won't run the whole thing, because I want to stop and take pictures along the way because it is a COLOR RUN!!!  Definitely need some epic pictures of this, so running the whole way is not the goal...just making it will be enough.  I feel like we will be able to run a big majority of it, and the colorfulness will be epic!  I plan on trying to blog more with this new adventure, and who knows...a new me may appear before its over...because I'm making myself EPIC...