Running

Camy here, and I am so excited about running!

No, I do not need a psych eval (although my husband would probably disagree just on general principle).

I am SO totally not athletic. I never have been. P.E. in school was pure hell because I have flat feet and back then, I hadn’t even heard of orthotic inserts or taping my feet. Running for any longer than 30 seconds caused excruciating pain all down the bottom of my feet.

Then I discovered orthotics and chiropractors. Wonderful things. Suddenly I was able to play volleyball. But I still didn’t like running much.

Then I tore my ACL. Twice. Yeah, not going through that again. I quit volleyball. (The whole ACL thing in Sushi for One? Yup, that was based on real life, baby!)

Anyway, to keep my butt from eclipsing the state of Alaska, I started running. It was also the only sport that put relatively little stress on my ACL since the motion was only forward, not side to side.

I hated it. I admit it. My lungs felt like they were going to heave out of my chest. Followed by the mush that my brains had become. And my heart had already deflated and was lying in a despairing heap around my diaphragm.

But then I discovered the Couch to 5K running program. It was kind of fun in a weird way. I think I just needed the structure of the schedule and the training program. I started to like running. I even entertained distant pink-colored dreams of running a marathon one day.

Okay, confession, I really wanted to run the Honolulu marathon and get all my friends to come to Hawaii to watch me. Vacaaaaaytion!

So I finished the C25K, but once I finished the training program, I got bored and only ran occasionally. Plus I was stupid—did I know anything about running? No. So attempts to run faster or longer didn’t really pan out since I didn’t know what I was doing.

But NOW the mojo is back! I discovered the Jeff Galloway run/walk method!

This is WAY cool. Basically you do a ratio of run/walk for the entire length of the run, including the very beginning before fatigue has had a chance to set in. You end up running faster than you normally do if you run the entire way, and your time ends up being better than if you had run the entire way, too. People have actually qualified for the Boston Marathon using this method.

PLUS it helps stave off injury. Hellloooooo, twice-torn-ACL girl is all over this!

There’s a SparkPeople article explaining it a bit here. I ordered Jeff Galloway’s book, but it doesn’t arrive until next week. :(

So in the meantime, I tried it on my run this week. And OH MY GOODNESS I FELT SO GOOD! I did a 2:1 running minutes:walking minutes ratio and did 3 miles no problemo.

So now can you see why I’m so excited? I might actually be able to exercise without feeling like my feet are going to fall off and my heart is going to explode. I might even be able to reach my pink-colored dream of running a marathon!

I heard there’s a marathon in Disneyworld in January …

Camy Tang writes romance with a kick of wasabi. Out now is her humorous contemporary romance novel, Single Sashimi, and her romantic suspense, Deadly Intent. She also runs the Story Sensei critique service. In her spare time, she is a staff worker for her church youth group, and she leads one of the worship teams for Sunday service. On her blog, she gives away Christian novels and ponders frivolous things. Sign up for her newsletter YahooGroup for giveways!