Last night I planned on waking up for early morning yoga. I set my alarm, paid for my class and left my clothes ready. But everything doesn’t always go as planned and I woke up a bit too late. It’s difficult to start something new but the point is to keep trying and eventually results will come… such has been my experience.
Usually when I tell the story of how I got into running I don’t mention the first run I ever did. The reason why I don’t is because I never thought of it as momentous and it was not the run that really got me into running. However, when I started to think about it I realized that it was a huge stepping stone in how my running life started. I wouldn’t say I was always overweight but I can say I always had a problem keeping my extra weight off. It was late 2013 when I finally really dedicated myself to a weight loss regimen, which for me was eating healthy and going to the gym. I was really over weight and knew it was time for a change. It took a lot of work but I was very dedicated and lost about 15 pounds (I promised myself I would never gain that weight back… unfortunately I did but more on that later). Then I hit a plateau… I thought that running would help me lose those stubborn pounds so I started going on the treadmill and reading up on running.
At this time I knew absolutely nothing about running… and I mean nothing from the shoes to the distances. I had done 5K walks with my mother for the Strides Against Breast Cancer so I at least had an idea of the 5K distance but that was it. With some reading and Facebook posts I learned about the runDisney events which immediately caught my attention because I love Disney and the themes looked amazing. During a 5K walk in 2014, my friend and I spoke about one day doing the Princess Run together, but it was just a thought and a someday goal.
It took about a year later until I finally signed up for my first official 5K run. I received an advertisement for a children’s hospital 5K and after some nervousness decided to sign up for it. My same friend worked for the hospital and she told me she was also going and that made me feel better. It was February 28th, 2016 when I did my first official 5K run (it would be this same weekend a year later when I would run again). I was with my friend and her friends so it was a good experience. I got the feeling of what the runs were like and my time was 40:05 which I found to be very good since I did not train a lot.
Unfortunately, after this 5K I didn’t run again. I did sign up for another 5K with my friend but when she couldn’t make it I was too afraid to go by myself. However, this run did get me to want to do what I had spoken about two years earlier, a Disney run. So when registration opened up that July I took a chance and signed up for the Disney Princess Half Marathon… it would be this run that changed my life. Of course I will write about my life changing run but writing about my first ever 5K makes me realize how everything came together. While I may not mention this first official run or even my 5K walks I see now how much of a role it played in my journey. We all have to start somewhere and I see now that this was my prequel.
“…For you will always gravitate toward that which you, secretly, most love. Into your hands will be placed the exact results of your own thoughts…” -James Allen
~Day
a Day with Day 