Learn to Run Graduation Day Year 3

My journey to destroy my “I am not a runner” belief began 3 years ago, when I learned about a fantastic locally run program who practically guarantee that anyone who can walk for 20 minutes can be able to run 20 minutes straight over the course of 10 weeks.

I found this hard to believe that running 20 minutes straight was something that I would ever be able to do. Even as a kid, albeit very overweight kid, I was not able to run even 5 minutes without stopping. That was a time when my knees didn’t even make a single clicking noise while bending, before 3 years of dialysis took it’s toll on my bones and made it so that there are so many clicks now, the noise sounds more like a buzz. So, it made wonder how there was any possibility at all I could run even that 5 minutes once again. But I could walk 20 minutes and I had already surprised myself with some bicycling achievements so I gave it a shot.

Week 1 of the program began with just 1 minute running and 2 minutes walking repeated 7 times. I was dying by the end of each minute, counting down the last few seconds, wondering if I’d actually make it the full minute, but I did. And when it came to that next Saturday of 2 minutes running and 2 minutes walking, I felt the same way but I did that too. And each week there after was the same, including the final week when I actually did run 20 minutes without stopping. The slow steady progress of the program allows your body to respond just enough each week so that, as long as you repeat the workout twice during the week, you’re ready for the next step. The solid plan along with encouragement from the wife of the program leader, who always stayed with me in the back reminding me repeatedly that speed did not matter and teaching me how to improve my breathing technique, allowed me to succeed in becoming a runner.

I kept up with it too and truly surprised myself by running a 5K later that summer. Thinking back actually, I believe it was when the idea of a Sprint triathlon became more than just a dream and became an actual possibility in my mind. That was 2 years ago. Each year my husband and I join up with the group again to provide support to new runners and maybe even a little inspiration. Today was the 3rd graduation day of the program we’ve attended. It was so great to see a new group of people graduate from the program and learn that they can be runners too.