Fifteen Minutes

They say that everyone will get fifteen minutes of fame during their lifetime. I think maybe I got mine this weekend. 

Toward the end of last week, I was contacted by someone at Runkeeper, telling me that they had seen my blog post about the Runkeeper Global 5k back in December, and asking me if I would be interested in letting them share that post on the Runkeeper blog. Of course, I agreed, and their blog post went live over the weekend. I'm not sure how they found my blog (since I don't really think my readership is that profound, lol), but I'm really glad they did. That post was a very important post for me personally, and if there was one that I would have wanted shared with the world, that would probably have been it.

Back in high school, if someone had told me that I would ever be athletic in the least, I'd have told them they were crazy. Strangely enough, I still don't consider myself athletic, even though I do consider myself a runner.  But I honestly think that has more to do with the image in my head than it does reality.  In truth, I am athletic. To be a runner, I have to be, at least to some degree. 

The days of me wasting my life away on the couch are behind me now. That person no longer exists...or does she?  There are days when I feel her there...lurking just beneath the surface, ready to pounce on any opportunity she gets to take over my life again.

I am determined not to let that happen.

I'm not sure how she ever surfaced to begin with, but I constantly find myself reminding myself that she does not control me. And the only reason she ever did was because I let her.  She is not me, though.  And she does not get to choose how I run my life.

Which is exactly what I have chosen.  To run.

There are many paths I could have used to get healthier, and many options I have explored and will continue to explore as I keep moving forward toward my goals.  I'm not sure running was ever one that I consciously thought about.  More likely, running chose me. 

I think it was always in me, this need to run, but I was too afraid to try to cultivate it.  I mean...that might have required me to actually take some form of action, but more importantly, it might have made me look like a failure again...something I was most definitely not prepared to do, not after all the years I went through, failing P.E. in school. 

I guess I just had to get to a point in my life where I was so sick of keeping that need to run free deeply buried, that I simply got tired of fighting it.  When I gave up, it finally came bubbling up to the surface. And now, instead of feeding my face to avoid the need to run, I feed the Run Monster. I go out to the trail (or track, or road, or God forbid...the treadmill), and I unleash that need to feel the wind in my face, to purge my demons to the cadence of my feet pounding the pavement.

Yes, you could say I regained my confidence during the Global 5k.  But you could just as easily say that I regain my confidence every single time I lace up and head out the door.  And that is something that will stay with me when my fifteen minutes of fame have long since faded.