Friday, May 15, 2009

I hate running

At least that's what I told myself for 37 years. I was introduced to competitive running in junior high school when I was thrown into a pair of bun huggers and a singlet to compete in the mile for the varsity track team. I have no idea why I ended up in this position, but I suspect it was because they couldn't find anyone else stupid enough to compete in that event. That's when I first realized that running was a painful pursuit that I would be quite happy to never experience again in my entire life.

Then, I joined the Air Force. Guess what their test of physical fitness was?--a timed mile and a half run. I thought the mile was painful. The mile and a half torture test was an annual reminder of just why I had sworn off running.

I gave running another shot when I became unhappy with my increasing waistline and my soaring cholesterol levels (thanks, Mom, for passing along that heritable trait) in my early twenties. I was mostly cycling at the time to lose weight and had myself on a very low fat diet aimed at some unreasonable body weight goal. I may have been running on and off for all of two months when I started having hip pain that then showed up on a bone scan as a calcium beacon. After being misdiagnosed as bone cancer (you have to love the military medical hobby shop), I found out I had a stress fracture in my femur.

Fact! I was not built to be a runner. This excuse carried me through 15+ happy, non-running years.


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