Running

Hello, again.
It's been a while.

I haven't even thought about blogging in the past year because, let's be honest, who has the time as a third year med student? But recently, I've taken up a new hobby that I wanted to share about.

I'm running.

Albeit, it's more of a (huge) challenge rather than a hobby. I can honestly say, I've never enjoyed running. In middle school, i barely barely passed the 1-mile PE requirement. In high school, I walked around the track with a group of girls even less interested in running than I was and lied to our teacher about many laps we were "running".  So this is kind of a big deal for me.

I can be somewhat sadistic in other areas of my life as well, so this is not completely surprising. I deliberately eat foods that I do not like in hopes that perhaps after the 600th olive that I try, I might start to like it. I often say yes lto commitments with people that I have no interest in spending time with hopes that I will practice patience and tolerance.  So similarly on a gloomy Pittsburgh day, I signed up for a 5K, bought my first pair of sneakers in 10 years, installed an app on my phone, and started to run.

And it has not been easy. At all.

I guess I never expected it to be; but I also didn't expect it to be this hard. It's not hard to start running (it feels great the first 30 seconds or so), it's more difficult to keep going. I still don't know how people do it. Even on a perfect evening on level ground, I want to give up after a few minutes. I honestly think this is one of the hardest things I've had to push myself to do--and I'm not even sure as to why it's so difficult. I can sit in the library for hours studying something I couldn't care less about. I can hike with a 40-lb backpack for days without a shower. I can even wake up at 4 am everyday only to stand around in a cold OR and get yelled at for 12+ hours a day. But run for a mile without stopping? No way. I'd rather die.

It's been a week since I started "training". I do a mix of running and walking (according to my app) for a total of 2-2.5 miles usually, though I hardly ever run for longer than 2-3 minutes at a time. I see my split times improving, which gives me some encouragement and motivation, but every run is still a huge challenge for me. I'm still working it out in my head, trying to figure out why I have this mental block against running (even when I chant positive, motivating mantras in my head!), and continuously pushing myself to keep running.

Maybe I need someone to chase me.

So for any one else out there who would like to challenge yourselves and join me on this journey, I would love the company. Here's to taking the leap!