If you attended the Run to Know More 5K in Orcutt on Saturday, Aug. 6, you may have noticed among the crowd of jovial participants a woman desperately trying to hold on to last place, crying her eyes out and begging for the mercy of a quick death. That woman was me, and on that day I ran my first-ever 5K.
I use the word “ran” loosely (sort of like Donald Trump uses the word “truth”). I’m not much of a runner. I’m not much of an anything when it comes to working out. I find that routine exercise unnecessarily detracts from my valuable Sitting on the Couch and Drinking time. My idea of cardio is fighting through the discount dress racks at Ross. I consider opening a box of wine to be “strength training.”
It’s not like I haven’t tried. Quite the contrary; I’ve been through every kind of exercise program you can name. I’ve had personal trainers and I’ve joined exercise groups. I’ve bought workout tapes and downloaded a billion fitness apps. I’ve power walked with Leslie Sansone, Sweated to the Oldies with Richard Simmons, and brought my leotard A-game to The Jane Fonda Workout.
But in the end, I always give up, because I hate working out. I loathe it like 5-year-olds hate taking baths or eating broccoli. I’d rather sit in a dentist’s chair and get a dozen root canals while listening to The Best of Hootie and the Blowfish on repeat. I get no satisfaction from hitting the gym or feeling the burn or pushing my limits.
And mostly, I haven’t needed to. I’m a freelance writer. Do you know how much physical labor is involved in that job? Basically all I need is the energy to move the laptop from my office to the living room so I can watch reruns of The Golden Girls while I work.
But Aug. 6 also happened to be my 42nd birthday. I’ve quickly come to realize your 40s are the decade where Father Time suddenly catches up to you. He grabs the back of your collar and shouts, “Hey, wait, I forgot to tell you about these things called heart disease and cholesterol. My bad!” You go from Googling pictures of “Brad Pitt shirtless” to freaking out over WebMd articles, which convince you that every soreness or hangnail is cancer or worse. Last year, I had a doctor ask me if I thought about taking a statin. I thought a statin was something you put in paint to make it dry quicker. Up until then, the only thing a doctor ever asked me during an exam was if I was planning to go to Lollapalooza.
Things in my body are changing. And as reluctant as I am to change with them, it’s impossible to deny the impact. So I was determined this year on my birthday that I was going to challenge myself to do something other than sit in a dark bar commiserating with the bartender about how much I missed rotary phones or how I wished ALF was still on the air.
So six weeks ago, I reluctantly signed up for a 5K. I may as well have signed up to do brain surgery on a whale while standing on my head. I started with a basic Couch-to-5K program. I took to the program about as well as a giraffe takes to piloting a nuclear submarine. My body was totally unprepared for what I was trying to make it do, and fought me every step of the way. This is an actual transcript of the internal conversation that sparks up pretty much every single time I hit the pavement:
My Body: What are you doing?
Me: It’s called running.
My Body: IT IS VERY BAD. YOU MUST STOP.
Me: Trust me it’s very good.
My Body: NO. NO IT IS NOT. YOU ARE LYING.
Me: But you’ll feel great when we’re done!
My Body: I’m reporting you to the police. This cannot be legal.
My body tried to file several legal injunctions barring me from ever putting on a pair of sneakers again. Not only was the pain like having an elephant try to squeeze up your nose, I was also really bad at it. I run about as well as a rusted Pontiac can sing a Mariah Carey song. I could barely run for 30 seconds without feeling like a tank had driven through my chest. The “power walk” I managed to squeeze out of myself would have made a turtle laugh.
During my first week, an old man with a cane breezed past me. Two pregnant women ran past me, looking at me like they were wondering if they should call the paramedics. At one point, I was afraid to go onto any trails alone, for fear a mountain lion might sense my physical weakness and take me down.
By the third week, I was ready to give up and start a petition to make day drinking an Olympic sport. I cursed the first human being who decided running was a valuable activity for human beings to engage in. (Seriously, how is this better than being ripped to shreds by a saber-toothed tiger?)
Nevertheless, I kept going.
They say there is this magical thing called a “runner’s high,” a feeling of euphoria many long-distance runners experience. It supposedly kicks in around 3 miles, which is little consolation when your lungs are exploding out of your ears.
But then something kind of amazing happened during the week before the 5K.
After six weeks of pushing myself, after all the whining, crying, screaming, hurting, and hating, I found myself doing something I never thought I’d ever do in my life: I was running. I was actually running for a few minutes, without stopping or letting myself surrender to the pain. I felt kind of good. Beyond the physical pain was a feeling of personal joy. It was from knowing I had done something I’d spent my entire life telling myself I’d never be able to do.
As I write this, I have no idea if I survived the 5K or not. I’m no inspiration and I’m not here to tell you my life has drastically changed. I’m just happy I didn’t quit. I didn’t surrender to the intense hatred I have of this entire activity. I set a goal and I took on something I’ve dreaded for my whole life. That’s a small victory, more valuable to me than any medal or trophy I could place on a mantle.
Now I just have to contend with all the lawsuits my lungs are probably going to file against me.
Rebecca Rose is freelance writer and satirist who has written for Cosmopolitan, Jezebel, Harper’s Bazaar, Esquire, Marie Claire, Elle, Seventeen, Redbook, and many others. Her origins are largely unknown. Some people suspect she was raised by a pack of wolves, except it is highly unlikely that wolves would put up with so much drinking and swearing. Contact her via Arts Editor Joe Payne at jpayne@santamariasun.com.
This article appears in Aug 11-18, 2016.