It's enough

In October, my friend and I started a 5k clinic at The Running Room. We signed up both for social and fitness goals. We only live about 35 km apart, but with us both working full-time, her l-o-n-g commute in the other direction and six kids between us, we rarely found the time to get together.

So, the running clinic became our social outlet with a side of running. We were asked on the first night why we were there. A lot of people were there for their second 5k clinic, hoping to improve their endurance. Others were following up after having been in the Learn to Run clinic and wanted to increase their intervals (from 5 min running, 1 min running intervals up to 10 & 1’s). Many of them had set a marathon or half-marathon race as their goal. When it was my turn, I admitted that I did not like to run, but I wanted to like to run, and that I had little to no interest in running a marathon.

That seems to be the goal for a lot people, the marathon. But, here’s the thing: I can’t think of many things I want to do for 4 to 5 hours (or more), and running is not even close to getting on that list. Running is boring, even with your best friend running and chatting by your side or your iPod pumping your favourite tunes or podcasts. The Running Room promotes a training strategy that includes regular intervals of walking periods. By the end of the clinic, both my friend and I felt that we didn’t require the 1 min walk after 10 minutes, but we looked forward to it as a mark that we were that much closer to being done.

When the clinic was over, many people were asking if we would be signing up for the 10k clinic.

Nope.

We’re still going to run. We’ve signed up for another 5k in March to help in the motivation department and we have put together our own training schedule that builds on what we learned in the clinic. We’ll still get together a couple of times a week to run together. But, we’ve decided that 5k is our distance and our only goal is to finish the 5k faster.

I'm not a running convert by any means.  I don't dread it like I used to, but given the choice between going out for a run and reading a good book, I'll choose the book. There are no marathons or half-marathons in my future.  I could maybe see doing a 10k if I can get to a point where I would be done in less than 45 minutes, because 45 minutes is pretty much my maximum tolerance level for pounding the pavement.  It's certainly not a lofty goal, but it's enough.

This is a picture of my friend and I (right) after our 5k race. Each of the 4,000 participants wore these Santa suits - it was quite the thing to see!