Woman, Running

About a year and a half ago, I started running.

Before that, I was not a runner. I was the antithesis of running. The Anti-Runner, if you will. In fact, I used to tell people that I only times I could be caught running is if I was being chased by a killer...or if there was an ice cream truck.

And then people would laugh, and I would just stare at them, and they'd kind of stop laughing and I'd keep staring, and they would cough and things would get generally uncomfortable, but hey, I really like ice cream, okay?

Well, since that fall of 2008 (documented here in this delightfully saucy blog post), I've made great strides with my running...and yes, pun absolutely intended. I haven't mentioned it much because this blog is generally intended to be funny (not that you'd know it if you read any of my recent posts), and running is decidedly *not* funny.
No.
There is nothing funny about gasping and hauling yourself down the sidewalk, cursing the gods and convincing yourself that people giving birth can't possibly been any more uncomfortable than you are at this moment in time.
No.
There is nothing funny about tasting the contents of your stomach as you round a corner and think to yourself, oh, well, I only have one more mile to go, as if a mile is a small and easy thing, because a mile is NOT a small and easy thing, and mmmmm, here comes that PB&J you had for lunch!
No, there is nothing funny about running.

And yet, I keep going.
This year, I ran 6 miles for the second time in my life, the first being only after a summer of pretty regular training and possibly an act of God (I'm not certain, I blacked out for the last two miles).
This year, I've also pushed my "regular" runs to the 3 to 4 mile range, compared to the 2-3 mile range I was doing last year.
And this year - well, tonight, to be exact - I beat my all-time 5k record by 4 minutes, running 3.2 miles in 28 minutes flat.

*cue Eye Of The Tiger, and commence musical montage of me running and sweating down various sidewalks and wooded trails*

For some people, this is no big deal. Some people would read this and kind of raise their eyebrows half in amusement and half and pity. Some people can run 5ks in their sleep, and I'm not saying that I hate those people, but if I ever meet one of them at a party, I immediately scan the room for items that I could use to make a shiv.

But Brian (a seasoned runner) has pointed out that when it comes to running, you can't compare yourself to others.
Well...unless you're acutally racing or something...but you know what I mean.
I can't compare my abilities to those people out there (god, I hate them so much). I can only compare what I did today with what I did yesterday and the day before that.

And if I do say so myself...I am clearly superior to who I was yesterday.
Sa-WEET.

So I guess I'll take this accomplishment as a sign that I'm kicking ass and taking names, if only because I can do today what I couldn't do yesterday. All I know is I'm running farther and faster than I ever have in my life. And I'll be damned if it doesn't feel good to do something better now than I ever have in my 28 years on this planet.

And my pants fitting better?
That's just a side effect of all this running.
An awesome, SPECTACULARLY AMAZING side effect.