Thing #5: You Gain A Whole New Sense Of Pride

And it may hit you at the strangest times.
 
The first time you tell someone, “I’m a runner,” you’ll be surprised by it, as though the actual thought will occur to you as it comes out of your mouth for the first time. Especially if you've been telling people you're just a jogger for a while. Then maybe after a while, someone will ask you if you’ve run any races, and you’ll say “Yes, actually, I ran a couple 5k’s this spring; I trained for the second one to get my time under 30 minutes, which I did.”
 
Maybe it will set in when you hit the first half-mile point of a run that an hour ago, you never thought you’d run, because your day was long and horrible and you were tired and achy and miserable. But at some point you decided, maybe since nothing else is making you feel better, you’d go work out. And suddenly you’re a half a mile deep in a 3-mile run, your mood already improved, your muscles thriving, and you know even if no one else does that you had the will to overcome your bad day and make yourself get out there.

Or maybe it will hit you when your baby brother goes running with you, and after four miles, he says, "I feel okay; do you feel okay?"
"Yeah."
"Want to run out another mile and back?"
And suddenly you've run a new record of six miles.

And then two weeks later you'll set out to break your own record, alone, and you'll run seven.
 
But those are the more typical times you’ll be proud of yourself.
 
You might get done with a long run and notice that the veins in the back of your hands are raised and swollen, and you think, “Wow, I look like someone who works out all the time.” You know, because you actually do work out all the time. Or ladies, you may be in the shower shaving your legs when you realize that you have to be a little more careful as you cross that new vertical ledge where your shin bone meets your suddenly-defined calf muscle. Or you may catch your profile reflecting in a mirror and wonder how your ass got so high. (That goes for ladies and gentlemen.)
 
Or maybe it will be as simple as realizing that your normal pants are now your fat pants, and your fat pants are now obsolete. What better reason than that do you need to start exercising?

Thing #4: Running is Gross

I'm going to try to ease you into this, but seriously - this is about to get gross. If you know me in person, you may never look at me the same way again after reading this, so if you like thinking I'm a girly girl with no real grossness about her, stop now or forever hold your cookies.

First of all, should you choose to accept this mission codenamed "Running," your skin is going to smell and feel nasty. Of course that's typical of any outdoor cardio sport; you knew that already. But if cardio or outdoor sports are new to you, you may find yourself for the first time stashing deodorant and face wipes somewhere you can get to them immediately after a run, on the off chance you have to go to the grocery and run into someone you know on the way home. Your skin will feel salty and oily until you shower, and that shower can't come soon enough.

If any of your joints or muscles are bad, you're going to have to strap or tape up to keep moving. And you're not going to look or feel graceful with straps around your knees, occasionally pricking you with velcro and constantly causing a sweaty itch against the felt or glue.

Your mouth may get all dry while you run, and you may feel like you're foaming at the mouth and have to figure out a nonchalant way to spit into the weeds every few hundred feet, pulling up the bottom of your shirt to wipe your mouth. The same feeling might happen in your throat, and then you're going to try to cough while continuing to run, and try not to let your hacking interrupt your breathing or your pace.

You're also going to want to wear sunglasses, even after dark, and it will have nothing to do with the Corey Hart song (which is good, because your neck could snap from all that head bobbing). If your eyes don't get dry from the breeze, they may stay wet enough to allow gnats to stick in them. Then again, it almost feels like a running rite of passage to have to stop running, pull out your barely-metallic cell phone, and use it to get a gnat out of the inside corner of your eye.

Oh yeah.

And then - and this is the part where it really gets lovely - your nose may start to run. And you won't have tissues. And you'll find yourself looking around in front of and behind you to see if anyone is about to witness what you're about to do.

If you have any 12-year-old boys in the family or down the street (or girls, if any of your relatives or neighbors are tomboys like I was), you may already have had the pleasure of hearing about or witnessing what I lovingly refer to as a "snot rocket." And when you're running, with no tissues besides your shirt - and God knows you can't use that, since it's already covered in drool anyway - it's just easiest to make sure you're not being witnessed, keep step, raise one finger to close a nostril, and blow out the other side into the bushes.

It's kind of liberating, honestly. And since this blog is about encouraging running, if this particular post hasn't completely turned you off to the idea, maybe spin it in your own head that running is a chance for you to hit the trail, be alone, and not be judged. Because the man and woman on bikes coming toward you are only going to be able to see you for about 18 seconds, and then they're just gone.

Get out there!

Thing #3: Running Makes Me Think Positively

I honestly can't even believe how much better I feel during and after a run.

I'm not sure how long it took me to stop thinking about the work and just let the ideas flow. For a long time it was a physical and mental struggle to even run two miles. I did it only because I felt I had to, to get in shape. But after a while I started to realize that while I'm running, I start feeling a little invincible. Not completely invincible; just a little.

There are days when I think, "This is going to suck." Maybe I've worked a long stressful day already, or maybe it's a 90-degree summer Sunday after a rain and I stayed out too late with friends the night before. And the first mile may be truly horrible, with me panting and feeling overheated or achy. But when my abs start to cramp, or when my knees start to ache a little, first the left, then the right, I somehow know I can just run through it. So I keep going. And then a mile or so later, I realize, my knees just don't really hurt anymore. "When did that happen?"

But where I really see the positivity in action is in my brain. Once I've launched into a run and am really going, I feel like I can kill any project I'm working on. I'm going to nail the interview, I'm going to sell the campaign, I'm going to forget that loser,  I'm going to break a 30-minute 5k, and I'm going to be amazing! I start plotting the details and talking myself up in my own head. Anything I want to do, I'm going to do it! Better than anyone else! And this positive energy takes over and makes my legs carry me the rest of the way, without any thinking about it.

It's like my friend in high school who used to run next to me and cheer me on as I tried so desperately just to finish a practice without walking. Only now I've been at it so long that I've learned how to be that voice for myself.

I know Life isn't always that simple. But I also know that people use a lot of worse things to get away from reality for a moment. Things that aren't constructive whatsoever. But my escape? I'm able to bring pieces of it back to my reality, and put them to use.

I get in my car and head home, and even if I don't have specific goals in mind that day, I at least feel accomplished. I just ran three miles.

Thing #2: Running Improves Just About Everything

I love the fact that my entire body has changed because I'm a runner. I've always had some curves, but it's amazing what a little sculpting does for a woman's ego. And apparently, my body isn't the only thing being positively affected by this very physical hobby.

I've already mentioned that my two younger brothers were pretty good runners. One of them is straight up amazing when he's in top training condition. That particular brother - Andy - hasn't always been good at everything the way he is today.

When Andy was a kid, he was incredibly accident-prone. From memory, he's had a broken leg, a broken collar bone, four broken arms, a near-miss pencil-toward-his-eye incident, a minor pitchfork incident (my fault; don't ask)... I'm probably forgetting something, but you get the idea. And for a long time, he was relatively ADHD and school was not his thing. Especially not when he had two broken arms at the same time and my mom had to take a leave of absence from teaching to home school him since he could barely write. Mom once joked that if you asked him to read a book for 10 minutes, he couldn't do it, but hand him a shovel and tell him to go outside, and he'd dig a hole for two hours. We kind of just thought that school would never be his thing.

The older of my brothers - David - started running Cross Country in junior high. And when Andy was in fifth grade, he had nothing better to do as we sat around waiting on David to get done with practice, so he started running at practices with the team even though he couldn't actually compete.

That year, the team ran a charity 5k as extracurricular practice for the season. Andy wanted to run it, and our dad figured he'd run along with Andy, staying back with the 10-year-old.

Andy took off and left our dad in the dust. And he ran so hard that he vomited after he finished. Strangely enough after that reaction, he was hooked.

By high school, his grades were drastically improving. Mom started doing some research. She found out that running can increase brain function and focus capabilities. By the time he graduated high school, Andy was getting consistent A's. Now he has almost completed his studies to be a high school Math teacher, and he's paid for a large part of his education with scholarships. And Mom's pretty convinced that running is what made the difference.

This is just one personal story about how running has changed someone's life. I can only assume that as I increase my speed and distance, I'm slowly picking away at my own attention deficit problem. Don't get me started on how running drastically improves my attitude and mood (well, you can get me started, but I'm saving that for my next post).

For a pretty extensive summary of how running can improve many areas of life, check out this awesome Men's Health article. And for a post regarding a UCLA study showing that increased running speed increases learning in the brain, click here.

Thing #1: I Can Actually Do This

When I was in high school, both of my brothers exhibited great natural ability at running. They presumably inherited it from my dad. I however, inherited his ability to sing, his height, and my mother's wide hips and asthma. Nevertheless, I decided that since my brothers were already dragging the entire family to Cross Country meets every Saturday, I might as well skip gym class and get a quarter credit by running with them.

Here's a quick summary:

I sucked.

No, really. My first race was around 37 minutes for a 5k, and I had to stop and walk a lot. I can't remember if I came in last that time, but I think in at least one race that season, I did. Usually I escaped utter humiliation by coming in about third from the end. Even my only senior female teammate would finish her practice, and come back to run beside me, saying, "Come on, Katie! You can do this! Don't stop running! No don't walk; you don't have to! Just keep moving!"

My PR by the end of the season was around 34 minutes. I'd been running from August to November, and I had barely improved. And my knees had bothered me enough to knock me out of at least one race. Coach said he would have let me letter if I'd broken 30 minutes, but that was ludicrous.

Eight years later, I hit the ellipticals at the gym in the fall of 2010. By early spring, I was going to the local bike path. A year after that, I had an official asthma test done - it was positive, and they handed me an inhaler.

This spring, my company hosted a 5k. I was incredibly close to 30 minutes. Two weeks after that was my high school's family 5k.

I trained for 2 weeks, constantly pushing myself harder just to shave 40 seconds off my time, and getting a sinus infection I didn't know about until after the race.

I still shaved about a minute twenty off my time.

Nine and a half years after my senior Cross Country season, I ran a 5k - at my high school, finishing on my high school track, right behind my coach's wife, with a sinus infection I didn't know about - in 29:17.

I don't think think that's the official result time. But it's the time I saw as I crossed the line. And as I tasted acidity in my mouth, I knew I had accomplished something great.

When I do things like this, it really makes me wonder what I can't do if I just put my mind to it.