Running Post - And Why High School PE Was the Worst!

When I was in high school I hated PE. One of the worst parts was the weekly mile. Each Friday our gym teacher would haul us out on the track. For a chubby girl like myself it was torture! I could breathe, it was hot, sweaty, and embarrassing. I would start out with the pack but would become quickly winded and find myself straggling. Then my friends and I would just start walking. Sometime around fifteen minutes we would still be one the track and our teacher would yell at us to bring our lazy ****s in. He also refused to let us play softball with the boys because he said we were wasting his time. Is it really no wonder I used to hate to exercise. In college I met and married my hubby a physical fitness junkie. I decided to start walking and after a year of that thought, hey why not start to run. It was torture. I'd run a minute, walk a minute, run, walk. My side hurt, my lungs burned, and I got shin splints. Pretty soon though I was running five minutes, and then fifteen. It got to the point where I could run thirty minutes, no problem. Then I got pregnant with my third child. I still ran but the runs became torture. Six months in I stumbled at church in a pair of high heels and broke my foot. That was pretty much the end of my running days. Now seven months postpartum I'm feeling the itch again. I talked to my sister this weekend and she told me she's training for a Marathon. She encouraged me to sign up for a race to get myself motivated. "No way," I told her. "If I sign up a 5K and you are running a marathon I'll look like a total douche." But the more I think about it the stronger the itch is getting. On Saturday I went to the gym and thought, "Let's just try a mile." I did it plus .1 but it wasn't pretty. I had a stitch in my side and was breathing pretty heavy, but I made it. It made me think that signing up for a race might just be a good idea. It isn't about winning (I'm built more like a water buffalo than a gazelle) it is about staying motivated to run a little more and a little better. Today I went to the gym and knocked down two miles. Can we just say we are on our way. I don't know what my problem was in high school...but I wish now I could go back and run that mile and then tell my gym teacher that he was the ultimate douche bag! Had he been cool maybe I would have learned to love exercise as a kid. Instead I wasted seven years because he ingrained in my head that exercise equaled humiliation. Seriously I should go home and kick his butt!