1 mile

1 mile as posted to the new site www.morethanaride.com! Go join today, only a few more posts left on this site.

“All endeavor calls for the ability to tramp the last mile, shape the last plan, endure the last hours toil. The fight to the finish spirit is the one... characteristic we must posses if we are to face the future as finishers. “
~Henry David Thoreau


One mile never seemed to be so far as when I took the first step. Retracing in my head the steps I had just taken, with intervals of 2 and a half minutes of running and 2 minutes of walking. I knew the distance I was going to have to cross to complete the task at hand.

A runner passed, giving a big smile and a “thumbs up” just before I got to the half mile point. I just had a group of girl runners run past me leaving me in their dust watching them gracefully bound away out of site. This left me wondering why I was even bothering. Then I remembered I set a really cool goal and I kept going. That “thumbs up” came at the right moment, then I was at half a mile. I had just finished a half a mile two days earlier so I knew it was achievable, but knows an off day is a possibility. Slowly up the little incline (which feels like a hill), half a mile and beyond, I was now running to the next goal of one mile. I had to keep reminding myself to go slow, to just reach the goal and not allow myself to get excited at this point.

Then at .75 of a mile I started to chant my mantra as the road beneath my feet started to feel like a conveyor belt moving in the other direction, keeping me from moving forward. With every other step I spoke a new word under my breath, “Yo..soy..una..machina*.”, and I kept with it. Then a woman passed, we had seen her every morning since we started, I told her with a quiver in my voice (from excitement) that I was about to finish my first mile without stopping. Then I told a stranger that blew past me. I was proud of my almost accomplishment.

With blubbering tears of joy, I finished the last steps up the incline over the other side of the bridge. Wanting to run to Tammy and Lisa to tell them of my most amazing accomplishment, my body needed to stop and walk for a while. I was still crying tears of joy when I got to them, because I had just finished running my first mile since high school.

I am ashamed of saying that we have driven past people who are running along the side of the road, probably looking a lot like I do now when I run; I have said, “why bother at that point? Just walk”. Well now I know and I am sorry! As my friend Lisa said, you had the “runners bounce” and that is what matters. That little bounce makes a difference, it is tougher and it does make you work. I had sweat rolling and bouncing off. It may not have been a graceful gazelle running across the park along the greenway, but I was running. Now after that first mile of running without walking, I feel like I can call myself a runner, although I felt like a runner with my intervals and proud of every step I take no matter how they are take!

Baby steps!
-Rhonda
*translation: Yo soy una machine = I am a machine. :o) It works!