Start Somewhere!

Those of you that know me, know that I love to run. Some people love yoga. Some

people love CrossFit or Boot Camp. I love to run. I do enjoy cross-training as well, but

running is just something I’m not willing to go without. At the time of this writing, running

has been a part of my life for a little over 9 years. What you may not know is that I didn’t

always love it. How I got started is actually a funny story. I was attending a ladies Bible

study at the time and the gals in the group were participating in a challenge to train for a

marathon that was coming up in a few months, and I thought “why not”? This will be fun!

I always enjoy good exercise! This was perfect! At the time, I didn’t even know how

many miles a marathon was. I thought a marathon was just a name for races, and had

different miles depending on the race. I actually had a friend tell me once that he was

training for a marathon. I said “Congratulations! How many miles is this particular race?”

He said “Sharon, um, it’s a marathon. They’re always 26.2 miles.” I’m embarrassed of

my ignorance back then, but it is laughable. So I started the training. I couldn’t run 20

seconds without stopping to take a 5 minute walk break. My breathing was out of sync.

My legs ached. Muscles were sore that I didn’t even know existed. It didn’t take long to

realize that I was not going to be ready for a marathon any time soon, and my desire to

run a marathon had disappeared somewhere between “this will be fun!” and “I hate

running”. Yep. I said it. As much as I love it now, I did go through a season at the

beginning where I thought people who run are crazy. But I had already started training,

and I wasn’t quite ready to give up that easily just because my initial goal was a little

more than I expected. This particular race event had several distances available. So I

registered for my first 5K. For those of you who don’t run and are like I was, not knowing

any distances in miles, a 5K is 3.1 miles. 3.1 miles. Okay, I could do that. So I did what

any smart beginner would do and looked for help. I teamed up with my Dad (he is still

my running partner to this day), who at the time had already been running for about 25

years and is a great coach! He helped me work up to that 5K distance and come race