Running to {My} Death

It’s no secret that I hate running. If you’ve read my blog for any length of time, it’s clearly obvious. But, the truth of the matter is, I don’t just hate it – I LOATHE it. And it truly, sincerely baffles my mind when I read a tweet from one of my tweeps which talks about their “refreshing” 4-mile, 6-mile, 10-mile, etc etc etc run. I actually throw up a little in my mouth when those tweets show up in my stream. The only thing refreshing about one of those tweets is the fact that I’m not the one writing it.

Let me say it again, to get the point across: I LOATHE RUNNING!!!!!

Regardless, one of my resolutions from the beginning of the year was to do more running. Yes, believe it or not, I actually made a commitment to follow through with my resolutions come hell or high water to the best of my ability.

As you may or may not recall, once upon a time, I tried to follow the Couch to 5k program when I first moved to Vegas. Which was a colossal failure. Although, honestly, I was setting myself up for failure when I started the dang program in the middle of the summer, in the desert. I mean, it was 100 degrees outside. At 6 am. And I was running at 12 noon. You do the math. It’s an honest-to-goodness miracle that I didn’t die of a heat stroke. Although it surely felt like I was having one every single time I ran. I digress.

Several months ago, soon after we moved to our new condo (which had a fitness center, with a treadmill, in a {slightly} air-conditioned room), I decided that it was now-or-never to restart the C25k program. After all, I paid for the darn app, and we all know how much I hate wasting money, right?

DAYS 1-3 (week 1) consisted of jogging 30 seconds with 45- or 90-second walking breaks for 30 minutes. In other words, D-E-A-T-H.

DAYS 4-6 (week 2) was a fate WORSE than death. 90-second jogs with 90-second walking breaks for 30 minutes. Holy crap, that week sucked. 90 seconds is a long, LOOONGGGG time when you’re running the entire time, I promise you. And lemme just say, if I hadn’t made that aforementioned resolution, I would have stopped after week 2. WEEK 2 SUCKED !!!!!!! Real sincere suckage.

It was at this point that I started googling: “When does it get easier?” As in, when does the running get easier. Cuz that’s what they all say: it gets easier. Except the known timeframe of the easiness is elusive, cuz not one of the forums I read seemed to have a definite answer for me.

But I persisted.

DAYS 7-9 (week 3) – jogging 2 minutes, walking 2 minutes, jogging THREE minutes, walking 2 minutes. And then rinse, wash, and repeat. And for the record, week 3 is NOT the week it gets easier. Not at all. Since week 2 was suckage, week 3 was therefore suckage squared. And do you know what sucked even more? When I started on DAY 9 (expecting to run no more than 3 minutes at a time MAX), my app decided to play a little trick on me, and skipped ahead to DAY 10 instead. And I didn’t even realize it until I passed the 3-minute mark (huffing and puffing but with not enough strength to blow a house down), and my app wasn’t saying to me: Walk now. Instead, it was making me run for 5 MINUTES STRAIGHT. F-M-L! It was at this point in the program where I realized that even the app was against me, mocking me, and finding the humor in torturing me.

(Running makes me paranoid too, apparently.)

But I persisted.

DAYS 10-12 (week 4) – running anywhere from 3-minutes to 6-minutes straight with a max walking break of 3 minutes. And believe it or not, it was this week where I thought I found the answer of “when does it get easier?” Cuz on DAY 12, I finally broke a stride. I didn’t struggle on DAY 12, like I had been struggling every day up until that point. *herkie* (not that I had the energy to do an actual herkie, mind you)

DAYS 13-15 (week 5) My mind played tricks on me on DAY 12, cuz I was thrown back into hell on week 5. Jogs of 5 to 10 minutes in length with small walking breaks of 2 minutes a pop. Yes, this is the week where they really start to step it up a notch. This was also the week I really felt like quitting. REALLY.

I mean, the web forums are saying that, by week 5, running becomes … FUN. Yes, even the haters start to enjoy the running. Uhhh, yeah right. My thought is: these people do not know the true meaning of the word HATE. Because if you truly hate something, you will never learn to like it nor ever consider it to be fun. EVER. Enough said. But, it was at the end of week 5 where I ran my first mile straight. Quite an accomplishment, I thought. But there was still no fun involved. For the record.

Even so, I persisted.

DAYS 16-18 (week 6) – by the end of week 6, I was running for 20 minutes straight. I realized two things during week 6:

1. The running NEVER gets easier. Do-able, yes, but not easier.
2. Ummm, so, as it turns out, I don’t sweat like normal people. Meaning, I barely sweat at all. Which is REALLY bad. Because sweating is what cools the body down. And if I’m not sweating, it means I’m overheating.

By the end of my runs, my face was the color of an eggplant. NOT KIDDING.

{click on image for source}

I looked like I belonged on a morgue table. It was *that* bad. Very scary indeed. And it would take a good hour for a normal color to return to my face, even after showering. It was definitely not a healthy situation for me. Even my husband was worried about me.

To try to rectify the situation (in addition to drinking tons of water on the days I would run), I wore a soaking-wet towel on my head during the workouts. To manually cool my body down since it wasn’t naturally doing it on its own. (And don’t forget, I was running in an air-conditioned room, too.) But even then, my face would still become the color of the brightest red tomato you ever saw. Not good. And I had to dodge the water drops on the treadmill too. Try doing that without slipping & falling. I should get extra points for that, you know.

And I wasn’t even running that fast, mind you. I was running a (don’t laugh) 14-minute mile. Yes, it’s pathetic, I know. My co-worker had also starting running around the same time I started the program, and he was running a 10-minute mile. AND HE SMOKES!!!!

*hangs head in shame*

DAYS 19-24 (weeks 7 & 8  ) It’s actually amazing that I survived this program, running a full 30 minutes straight on the last day (which, by the way, was not even close to a distance of 5k for me – more like 3k, tops). The whole not-sweating thing just proves to me that some people, meaning me, are not designed to run. See, it’s not just in my head. Even my body knows that running is not my bag.

I did not find it to be fun. I did not feel “healthy” afterwards. Frankly, I felt like shit. And I felt like I should have been running to a graveyard and jumping in a pre-dug hole at the end of the half-hour. Just to make it easier on the rest of my family.

When I finished the program, I stopped running. Sure, I had plans to keep it up (although not for more than 20 minutes at a time, due to the whole not-sweating thing) but that never happened.

I really feel like I could be shortening my lifespan by continuing to exercise.

True story.

(There’s an actual term for the not-sweating disorder. It’s called anhidrosis. And it’s life-threatening. Not that I’ve been officially diagnosed, but I’m just saying. So, if this happens to you too, you should stop running or you could die. Okay? *nods head emphatically*)