How I Tricked Myself Into Liking Running
It’s good for your mental and physical health, and doesn’t require any equipment. So why does it seem so hard to get started?
Until last week, the only time I’d finished a race was during Track and Field Day in fifth grade. By middle school, I was trying to figure out how to get out of gym class because it was too hard for me to run a mile. Sports, in general, were not my thing. Running, less so.
As an adult, I have gone to the gyms, taken exercise classes and worked with trainers. But none of it ever brought me joy, or made me want to keep doing such things. The most sustained exercise I did in the past decade was a regimen of deep knee bends with a colicky baby in my arms after my first kid was born.
Then lockdowns came along, and I surprised everyone in my house, especially myself, by signing up to join a local running group which had moved from holding local meetups to checking in with each other virtually. Because it was exercise I could do alone, the conditions were ideal.
But for a newcomer to running, the notion that you can just throw on a pair of sneakers and hit the road turns out to be a big, fat lie, I assume created by people who started running after giving up soccer or basketball.
