4.5

I'm really proud. I just completed the longest run of my life: 4.5 miles! I only started running about a year ago, once a week with Julie. And I wasn't all that excited about it. I had resigned myself to a life without running due to a lack of personal success or enjoyment in all my previous attempts. And I hated how exhausted I felt afterwards.

But Julie and I wanted to spend time together and somehow we agreed that running together might be helpful in disciplining ourselves into excercising regularly. So we ran, just short distances as first, and walked the rest of the time. In the spring we talked about running a 5k together, but were never able to finalize it. When summer came, I was starting to enjoy running a very little bit. While I was in Austin, I decided to try and keep up my endurance at least and try to run some of the pretty trails like Town Lake. One rainy afternoon, I showed up under the overpass to try again how far I could go around the lake. As I started hopping around the puddles, I decided to experiment with my breathing. Julie always said I needed to take slower breaths which confused me. Don't you need MORE oxygen when you run? Breathing slower seemed counter-intuitive. But I was bored. So I started breathing slower, which ended up forcing me to breathe deeper. The change was amazing. I felt so much less exhausted! I ran nearly 2 and a half miles. I was so excited!

When I came back to Norman I started running with Julie again, and then with Meghan Barnes, and now with Megan Carey also. Julie and I ran a 5k together, the Monster Dash, and had so much fun!

I really am delighted that I ran 4.5 miles just now. Even though I ran it by myself through my neighborhood, it really is something I never could have done on my own. It's so great to have running buddies who have help push you to keep running during the times you want to stop. And sometimes I'm the one who keeps pushing. It's a wonderful model of how you learn self-discipline. You can't fix you're lack of self-discipline by telling yourself to be more disciplined. It doesn't really make sense. You need help from the outside to learn and get discipline. Hmmm. I'm pretty sure I'm stealing this all from How People Grow. Read it, people.