Goals are dreams with deadlines.

Goals are dreams with deadlines. - Diana Scharf Hunt

The Beginning


I began running for pleasure two years ago. Pleasure and running in the same sentence? I never thought it would be possible unless it referred to the termination of that particular physical activity.

I ran a bit back in high school for after-school sports. I dabbled with the idea of jogging in college, although it never came to fruition beyond a panicked sprint to an 8am lab class. I even had a brief post-college delusion about starting to workout regularly that led to the purchase of a far-too-snug, overpriced Underarmor shirt. But let's face it, by the time I hit 25 years old, two blocks down the road and I was wheezing, my lungs screaming and in the sort of pain that is reserved for symptoms usually relieved by Midol.

Running seemed torturous. Running long-distance seemed masochistic. Running long-distance races while being timed amidst competative athletic peers seemed straight up impossible.

Then shit hit the fan.

Now typically when people ask me about how I started running I have to demur. My start was very atypical. In fact it was borderline self-flagellation, and I have no practical advice to offer on overcoming that initial demoralizing, painful, boring hump. This is because I started out bent on physically and emotionally exhausting myself to the point of collapse.

I joined a gym in a state of emotional turmoil, and I stepped on a treadmill a few weeks later when I realized that the elliptical machine simply didn't have the sadistic capacity to bring me to my knees. I was outrunning emotional pain, literally.

By the time I started to feel better, saw the bright light of optimism in the form of a charming blonde sailor, I had actually started to enjoy running. I totally skipped the bad part where most people recover their sanity and go back to eating Cheetos on the couch. I began to notice that I looked forward to hopping on the treadmill and pushing out a 40 minute jog (when people weren't waiting for the machines, of course, per gym policy!). And throughout the ups and downs of my personal life over that year I always could rely upon the gym and running the cheer me up.

Then one day I thought that perhaps I needed a serious goal. Watching Lou Dobbs at a 6.5mph pace each night between 7pm and 8pm was enjoyable, but not the level of motivation I started to crave. That motivation materialized in the form of a St Patrick's Day 5k road race, a race that would end in a pub crawl with a shining finisher's medal hung around my neck.

This race business meant that I was going to have to leave the safe haven of the steady, clocked treadmill runs for the most daunting environment of all: the urban outdoors.

Now running along cement sidewalks, jumping curbs, gauging stoplights and dodging through busy intersections could be considered a sport in and of itself. Given where I live, there is no way for me to avoid this metropolitan obstacle course. In fact, I can't even effectively gauge my pace because I spend so much time avoiding near-death. When it comes down to race courses, they're like beautiful, flat vacant straightaways. But I digress.

My first jog outside was to get the lay of the land. It sucked. I had wanted to see the race course that I'd be facing, and when I did, it appeared to literally be an uphill battle. You see, as embarrassed as I am to admit this, I never considered putting much of an incline on my treadmill runs that previous year. Ouch.

In spite of the learning curve involved with running on hills and pavement, I was finally presented with a new exhilarating challenge. I had a tangible goal. A deadline for achievement. I had a gauge of what a good time was for that distance. I had two months to improve upon it.

Now that first race didn't really go as planned. I suffered from disabling shin splints a week before and ran the thing in a leg brace two days before I had x-rays to clarify if it was a tibial fracture or not. But it was a hell of a race, a hell of a feeling coming through that finish line. I was hooked. No two ways about it. I immediately signed up for four more races that spring.

That's how it all began.