Another "National Run Day" blog post

By now, I'm sure you're aware it's National Run Day (notice it's all in caps so as to denote how official and important this is), because everyone with a blog who didn't already have a post planned for today has a post about this today. I've actually been planning this for a couple days, so my post about National Run Day doesn't count as a last minute fill in.

You see, I've been trying to run for as long as I can remember (cue the "dreamy music and fade to sepia color memory sequence"):

- In elementary school, I was sure I would at some point discover I could use The Force or become a superhero. During recess, one of our playground attendants would carry a stopwatch to keep an eye on the time we spent playing. I used to ask/beg/make her time me running some distance from where she stood to the monkey bars and back. This is probably the last time I was ever fast.

- In Junior High, I played Tight End in football, because it was the position that involved the most running, and I was pretty tall. I was never very good mostly because I lacked confidence. I was often afraid of making mistakes, and so I wasn't in the position to succeed. Even then, I wasn't really fast enough to run with any of the fast players, and was even demoted to play with the 8th graders as a 9th grader to get me some game experience in hopes of boosting my confidence. It didn't happen.

- In High School, I figured out that maybe I didn't have to be fast, I just had to be able to stick stuff out. So I signed up for the 100 mile club. The 100 mile club was a group that got together to run 5 miles a day a few days a week until we each reached 100 miles run. I tried it 2 years, and I think the furthest I ever got was 50ish miles. At this point I realized I was neither fast nor endurant and returned to marching band believing I'd see the last of running outside of family softball and football games.

Flashing forward to 2007 (instead of sepia and dreamy music, let's go with a grainy color reel and whatever was the pop music of the time):

- Wanting to get in better shape but being nearly 400 lbs, I knew running was not where I wanted to start. Not even thinking about the 2 ten speeds I had in my garage, I saw a flyer for a 10k walking race, and 40 pounds lost later, I was still walking.

Since then I've been trying to transition from walking to running. The best I've managed was to shuffle/job my way through some 5k's/10k's. But in the end, I'm usually left feeling disappointed in my performance because it's been so hard to motivate myself to run instead of other workouts or on top of other workouts. The sad part is I know that running is where I can make the most improvement in my triathlon times, not to mention making my road races that much more enjoyable.

So now, here on National Run Day, I've already run (this morning, just a "quick" mile before work), but I've decided that if I'm ever going to do this, it needs to be an every day thing. I can't run just once every other day, or even a few times a week. I pledge to run at least a little every day, but with a goal of making a routine out of something I'm not good at until I really do become good at it.