HOW I BECAME A RUNNER
Note: This was written January 1, 2021. I transferred this blog from my old website.
The start of a new year is always so exciting. You get to leave the old behind, and start a new chapter in your journey. With that clean slate on deck, enter all the resolutions. For at least 20 years, I have had the New Year’s resolution: “I will regularly exercise.” This was also followed by, “I will go on a diet and lose 35 lbs.” Until the past 2 years, I have failed on both of these goals every single year.
For the first 40 years of my life, I have never found joy in exercising. I’ve always known it’s something I SHOULD do, but I never actually wanted to. I didn’t want to, because straight up it was just not that fun. It required so much mental battling to muster the energy to even show up for a workout. I was exhausted before I started. It wasn’t enjoyable and I never stick with anything, so why would this time be any different? I tried yoga, hot yoga, bikram yoga, pilates, hiring a personal trainer, working out in a gym by myself, cardio machines, walking, a few attempts at running (they lasted like 2 days), swimming, various cardio classes and hated all of it. Except walking. That wasn’t so bad. Minimal effort, often with a friend and being outside in nature doesn’t suck. The reason this resolution kept showing up year after year, is that I desperately wanted to drop some weight and I knew that exercise was a crucial building block. Whilst I repeatedly gave up on myself, every few months I would try some variation of a restrictive diet and exercise plan again. Then I would quit, because it was too hard. Rinse and repeat. My weight kept going up, my clothes kept getting tighter and I hated how I looked in photos. If you have ever yo-yo dieted and lost weight through just your diet without exercise, than you know that if you lose 20 pounds, the shape of your body looks pretty much the same but smaller. That always drove me nuts, because if I was depriving myself on some diet, I expected to transform into a super model.
Let’s talk about my husband for a minute. I met Chris when he was 19 years old. He was athletic and liked to play basketball at the gym for hours with friends. When we graduated from college, we moved to the East Bay for work. We both took on stressful jobs. Chris didn’t have the time or passion to keep playing ball, so he shifted gears to running. He had not run a day in his life. I remember his first run, 15 years ago. He was wearing long basketball shorts, whatever sneakers he owned at the time and had his ipod. He ran to the corner of our street and back. Everyday he went a little bit further and a little bit faster. Over the years, he has run 15 marathons, and runs 40 miles every single week - which includes a weekly half marathon. He has never faltered. He makes it look so easy. With his consistency and speed, I often forget that there was a time where he was a beginner too. I was envious of that dedication, and also a little confused as to why he loved it so much. It looked like really hard work to me. He would work his 9-5, and then go on a 75 min run and head home. It used to really irritate me. Sure I’ll make dinner by myself. How nice for you to get to just show up! I worked all day too ya know. What I found was on the days he didn’t run and did come home to help, he was really grumpy. That may be an understatement. He wouldn’t outwardly complain, but the air was thick. If he ran and came home he was fine. I didn’t like angry Chris that much, so I got over the lack of dinner help and actually encouraged him to run.
You know what isn’t easy? Being married to a handsome, super athletic guy who is really consistent at everything he does, when you can’t seem to get your shit together. He watched me for well over 20 years, start and stop diet and exercise over and over. We would even have conversations like, “How are you so amazing and consistent at your job, but you can’t seem to be consistent with anything for yourself?” Ugh.
I am a very analytical person. Despite my lack of success with resolutions, I was able to see where I was going wrong. The most blatantly obvious was going from zero to 100 too fast. No exercise whatsoever + eating ALL the things, to a drastic caloric cut, lots of food restriction, and the expectation that all of a sudden I was going to exercise like a beast. When it came to working out, I psyched myself out of doing it every time. I planned that I would go to the gym 4 days a week after work (I didn’t have kids yet). It sounds realistic right? All day long, I would think about how I didn’t want to go. There are 6 days left in the week, I have still have plenty of time. I’ll go tomorrow. The next day, “Oh darn, now I have a meeting today, I can’t go.” 5 days left, plenty of time. Still haven’t gone? I’ll just do my 4 days in a row. Guess what? I never did it. The excuses are endless and I can always find one.
Fast forward about 10 years. I quit my job, moved back to Santa Rosa, CA and was juggling being a stay at home mom to a 4 and 6 year old, and running a freelance makeup business. I still wanted to lose weight, I didn’t feel good in my own skin and was tired all the time. Three things were critical elements of change for me: 5 to Thrive, removing my excuses and F45.
I had started listening to audiobooks while cleaning the house, and shifted from fiction to self help. A friend recommended Rachel Hollis’ book, “Girl, Stop Apologizing.” She is a tell it like it is kind of author, and I appreciated how direct she was. She has a thing called 5 to Thrive. If you do these 5 things, they would move you in the direction of better health and habits. The first, is wake up an hour earlier before your family and use that time for yourself. The second is practice gratitude and write down 10 things you are grateful for everyday. The third is drink half your weight in oz of water per day. The fourth, is cut out one unhealthy item of food you eat or drink, for one month without making any other diet changes. Something like diet soda, your daily Cheetos or whatever is one thing you consistently eat that you know you shouldn’t. It wasn’t an entire category of food. The idea was if you cut that for 30 days, then next month you would choose something else to add etc. Finally, move your body for 30 minutes everyday. This doesn’t have to be strenuous. It can be going on a walk or playing frisbee with your kid. She kind of yells at you in her book, about how important it is to move your body. The summary of the rant, boils down to you only have one body and you need to take care of it. Life is not a dress rehearsal, that whole thing. The excuse of not having enough time is not valid. You have the time for what is important to you and it’s only 30 minutes. I was intrigued. These things all sounded doable.
I decided I would go on a 30 minute walk everyday no matter what for 90 days, and just see how it went. I made myself a chart to check off each day and put it on the fridge. I would look at my schedule the night before and see where in my day I could fit in the walk. It was all over the place. Sometimes in the dark, early in the am before a wedding, sometimes it was 6:30 pm after dinner. I started listening to self development podcasts on my walk. It was really helpful to hear new talk tracks on how to develop into the best version of yourself. I found it really motivating. In the 90 days, there was one day I didn’t feel well, but I went on the walk anyways because I didn’t want to break the streak. It felt so good. It was also the first time that I wasn’t on a diet, but I was focusing on exercising. Ordinarily I would have thought what is the point of this, I’m not going to lose any weight. I recognized I had to try something different, so why not? I did the other 5 to Thrive items too. At the end of 90 days I was floored. I had stuck to 5 things consistently which I had never done. My two biggest takeaways were: It was so much easier to know I was going to move everyday vs. four days a week, because it removed all excuses about what day it was going to happen, etc. The other thing I learned was, the sooner in the day I got it over with the better, because there was less time to think about it. I also fell in love with getting up early, but that’s another blog post. Walking is one of those things that is pretty easy, so we disregard when coming up with an exercise plan. I think it is the right place to start to build up the exercise habit. The act itself is easy, but the consistency of doing it every single day is not. So you are focusing your energy on building the habit, not the task.
So remember how my ultimate goal was to lose weight? After feeling pretty proud of myself for moving my body for 90 days, I was ready to take on more. I heard a lot about this new gym called F45, and one of my best friends wanted us to sign up to try it. I fell in love right away. It solved every single problem I have ever had with a gym. First of all, it isn’t a meat market. There aren’t a bunch of young singles with ulterior motives everywhere. There aren’t mirrors on every wall reminding you that you don’t look the way you want to. There are people of every shape and size working out. F45 is not a regular gym, it is a workout class. 3 days a week there are weight lifting classes, 3 days a week are cardio classes and the last day is a hybrid. The duration is 45 minutes. There is a demo of what you are supposed to do at the beginning. As you move through each station, there is a TV screen that shows you how to do each exercise. The trainers come around and help correct your form, but no one is yelling or pressuring you. The classes fly by and I felt incredible when I was finished. I can’t be trusted to go to a gym by myself and workout. I just won’t do it. Hiring a personal trainer is great, but most people meet with one and then workout a few days solo. I wouldn’t do the solo days. It’s also pretty expensive to workout with a trainer every time, but that’s the kind of handholding I need. F45 solved that conundrum, because while it is still a sizable monthly fee, it is less than a personal trainer. You get a trainer present in every class. Also, let’s be honest, I would spend that monthly fee on plenty of other things, that brought less value to my life. I quickly decided the cardio days were not for me. Too much jumping and I’m too out of shape. I decided I would do the strength days 3 days a week, and walk 30 minutes the other 4 days a week. Holy crap, 3 months later I was still doing it!!! I had also lost 15 lbs! This was bananas for me. I had been consistently exercising daily, for 6 months. I hadn’t done that long of a stint EVER. I felt amazing and was shocked how much easier it was for me to move every single day, vs a few times a week. I felt ready for more, because I slowly built up the consistency.
I really wanted to drop the last 10 lbs. I needed more cardio than just walking, but didn’t like the cardio days at F45. I did really enjoy the outdoors and listening to podcasts, but wanted to step up my game. Could I run? I researched how would a beginner start (I was too embarrassed to talk it through with Mr. 15 years of running, because I was scared I would fail and didn’t want to let anyone down). I came across a Couch to Half Marathon in 20 Weeks schedule. It was a run-walk plan and the first page looked really doable. Halfway down the second page looked scary, and the third page looked downright terrifying. The article recommended that you comfortably walk at a brisk pace, for about 30 minutes a few days a week, at least 2 weeks before starting the training. Check! The schedule had you run 3 days a week, rest for 2 days and cross train for 2 days. The cross training could be walking, yoga, weights or whatever you want. The goal is to strengthen other muscle groups so you don’t injure yourself. With F45 I was doing that. Check. Resting for two days I didn’t think would work for me. I was too nervous to break my streak. I decided on the 2 rest days I would just walk 30 min.
I started the couch to half marathon training the first week of January in 2020. I religiously followed the schedule. I learned a lot, and was able to lean into Chris’ expertise when I ran into challenges. I will share all of that with you in a separate post. I signed up for my first official half marathon in May. I was about halfway finished with the training, when Covid-19 exploded and the world shut down. It was evident that there would be no half marathon. During the initial weeks of Covid, the gyms shut down too. There goes that. The workout choices were either walk, run or workout at home. I tried online work outs at home for about a month and couldn’t stand it. I threw all my energy into doing my best on the three days of running I did have, and continued to walk. My anxiety surrounding Covid, was turning me into a basket case. We didn’t know much about it and I was panicking. I realized how much running was helping me process my stress. Hitting the pavement, getting some fresh air and the time alone was glorious. It was at that moment, I realized I was hooked on not just running, but exercise in general. I never realized how much tension and anxiety I carried around everyday. The days I ran or worked out, I felt so much better and it carried throughout my day. Making the decision to NOT exercise, became more uncomfortable than the decision TO exercise. What the hell? Is this really me? It was a kind of an out of body experience. Remember, for 40 freaking years, I didn’t exercise longer than 2-3 weeks here or there. Now I’m hooked? Is this why Chris was so grumpy if he didn’t run??? I felt a sense of determination I had never felt before. I don’t care if my half marathon is cancelled. I don’t need a formal setting, to complete the task. 13.2 miles could be done all by myself. I calculated when I would finish the training. The official half marathon date was scheduled for May. I chose Mother’s Day to do my own race. I am not a fast runner. Some may call it jogging. To me it’s running. I did not walk one minute of my solo half marathon. On May 10th, 2020, I ran 13.23 miles in 2 hours and 49 minutes. I cried like a big baby my last mile. I’m actually crying as I write this, remembering that moment. I know this sounds dramatic, but this is something I thought I could NEVER do. That sad, anxiety ridden little girl who quits on herself over and over inside of me, the one I thought could never pull herself together - did. The moment was surreal. I worked so hard to get there and the process wasn’t easy. There were a few weeks in the training where I really wanted to quit. I pushed through, sought out help and accomplished the first major goal I ever really set for myself. Zig Ziglar said, “What you get by achieving your goals, is not as important as what you become by achieving your goals.” True dat.
Before I write a blog about all the things that helped me become a runner, I wanted to share the backstory. The story of a Stefanie, who couldn’t connect the dots, who consistently quit on herself over and over, and never believed she could be the person she is today. I wanted to share this story, because I think there are many of you out there, that share the same beliefs. That YOU can’t do it. Let me tell you friends, you CAN. Don’t let what you haven’t done, determine what you can do. I’m nearing my first year anniversary of being a runner. ME a runner. You heard that right. If I can do it, so can anyone. I have lost all 35 lbs, I am still running 3 days a week and loving it. For my birthday, I chose to I run my second half marathon. For the first time ever, I also have some visible muscle tone. I feel strong and the most alive I have ever felt. Surreal is an understatement. I can’t wait to share more with you! Xo, Stefanie