On December 31, 2023, I woke up and did something I hadn’t done for many years: ran 5K on my treadmill. Since then, I’ve done a 5K every two weeks; as of writing I’m up to 13 and by the time you read this, 14.
I know there’s nothing particularly impressive about that distance, or frequency. Certainly not my speed, which I’ve previously compared to an old man shuffling to the fridge in the dark. Sometimes I push myself to beat my previous time, but often I just aim to have fun and do whatever run-walk intervals feel good.
What I’m proud of is keeping the promise to myself. I decided I would do this every two weeks, and I have. Even when that meant rocking up next to a giant sweaty guy on the treadmills in the hotel I stayed in while moving; even when I had to get out of my house for real estate viewings and do the run on a day when I’d also have to amuse myself by wandering the mall for hours on tired legs.
I don’t have any specific goal in mind and I’m not training for anything. I can’t compare myself to me in the past (still slow, lol) and I definitely can’t compare myself to other runners (that way lies only darkness and despair). It doesn’t really matter that the task is a 5K. The only real purpose is to show myself that I can, well, show up for myself.
I was born with club feet, which meant that as a baby I had surgery to straighten out my lower legs. I don’t remember this, obviously, but I do remember having to sleep in a pair of shoes with a metal bar between the heels. The toes pointed outwards, the idea being to keep my legs from turning back toward each other. I wore them long after I outgrew the little white booties; my parents cut the toes out but insisted I keep wearing the contraption.
I remember being told that I shouldn’t sit cross-legged on the floor in kindergarten “because of my knees.” I assume this was related to the condition of my legs but it was never explicitly spoken about. I was also told that I had bad or weak knees and running wasn’t good for me. I believed this without ever questioning it, although I was a decent little sprinter in our elementary school “fun day” races.
It wasn’t until my early twenties, desperate to find some way of getting back into fitness after having a baby, that I genuinely tried running as a hobby. My daughter was in day care only three days a week, and my husband at the time was not one to eagerly look after his own child for more than one night or so a week, so I settled on a plan: I would drop her off at day care and run home on those three days.
Like basically every newbie runner on the planet, I started off trying to run way too fast for my fitness level, and got gassed as soon as the first hill came along (and I lived in a very hilly neighbourhood!). I had heard of the Running Room’s 0-5K training programs and wondered if this would help. Again, I needed a way to do this that didn’t involve leaving home in the evenings (yes, it was a shitty situation; yes, we got divorced). Luckily, in the advanced technological age of approximately 2001, the Running Room had launched an online version that didn’t require showing up for group runs.
Every week I listened to audio recordings of my “coach,” Running Pal Al, over the dial-up Internet. I timed my walk-run intervals on a plastic digital watch I got with a kid’s meal at Harvey’s. I carried a Walkman with a Jamiroquai album dubbed onto cassette tape. Amazingly, I stuck to the plan, did my three days a week, and built up to twenty minutes of running non-stop, which had frankly seemed impossible.
The first proof I ever had of the concept that you’re usually ready for something long before you think you are was in the training program’s claim that once you could run or jog for twenty minutes, you could do a 5K. What? I’d never actually run that far. And it was sure gonna take more than twenty minutes! I was missing the point. You don’t need to train an entire distance before running that distance. And as a beginner, you could rely on the run-walk intervals you’d been doing all along to get you to the finish line.
I think my first 5K “race” was the Toronto Waterfront 5K. One of my besties (who is definitely reading this! Hi!) had also started running and we signed up together. We coincidentally had bought the same baby blue running tank so we looked like a perfect little team. Beyond doing run-walk training, neither she nor I ever really “trained” for any of our runs, and we did a lot together after that one. They were just fun, and then some pain, and then breakfast and a cold pint.
Since those days I’ve fallen off the running path (metaphorically) more times than I can count. Loss of interest or time, injury, those old stories coming back: “you’re not a runner, you have bad knees.” In truth, my knees have sometimes been bad! But I think it has more to do with a lack of thoughtful strength training for runners than any childhood condition.
As I meander along in these bi-weekly 5Ks, I’m reminded of some key lessons from self help (or life in general).
The stories we’re told in childhood, and that we internalize, are really powerful and we have to consciously unlearn them. And then make up new ones.
External motivation is great (not wanting to finish last in a race was often mine when it came to running), but the feeling of keeping a promise to yourself is pretty great, too. They’re not mutually exclusive, either.
Comparing ourselves to others is usually a highway to misery. It’s hard, maybe impossible, to quit it completely. When someone else’s numbers, or their success in general, start to irk me (no fault of theirs!) I just mute them for a while on social media. It helps.
We make a lot of things harder than they need to be. I don’t think running will ever feel easy to me. But there have many times when I made it so much harder by giving myself targets that I thought I “should” hit. Last year, in one of my many “begin again" phases, I genuinely took it as slow as I wanted to go. And lo and behold, it wasn’t so freakin’ hard! It felt pretty good, most of the time. I do some “hard” (for me) sessions, but mostly I now know that I don’t have to make it (or anything else I do) harder than it already is by giving myself arbitrary (or worse, someone else’s) goals to meet.
What promises to yourself are you keeping this summer?
Apps I’m using: If you’re interested in starting to run, you don’t need much, and there are free 0-5K plans you can find online. If, like me, you prefer having someone/thing tell you what to do and don’t mind paying a bit to have them do it, here’s what I’ve used/am using:
Peloton app: if you run on a treadmill (any treadmill), you can use the app on your phone or tablet and follow along with run-walk and running classes and programs. Last year I did the “You Can Run” program and a load of beginner running classes and it helped me get back into things after an absence of many months.
Runna app: for outdoor or tread running, Runna has a lot of customizable training programs. I’m doing the “New To Running” 5K plan right now.
What I’m watching: A Gentleman in Moscow. Very enjoyable, great performance by Ewan MacGregor.