In 2008, on the heels of that run, Dana trained for and completed her first marathon.  I avoided her encouragement and chose a different path: Quit exercising, eat more, and race quickly back to my starting weight.  I was equally successful.

Accordingly, now that it’s 2009, I decided it was time to once again take control of my physical health.  Yesterday, I officially joined Weight Watchers Online.  I find the Weight Watchers rules a little confusing.  More points bad, fewer points good. Like golf (another sport that hates me).  I maintain I should get MORE and not FEWER points for good behavior.  I also find the measurements a little ridiculous.  Who can eat a 1/2 cup of cold cereal?  I am going to need some smaller cereal bowls.  Overall, though, I like the idea of accountability. It’s like an electronic sticker chart, and I love sticker charts almost as much as I hate running.

Besides the healthy living, I’m also resolved, resigned?, to keep blogging.  What’s on your sticker chart for ‘09?

I’ve learned there’s much I admire about Running.

I’m a confident and competitive academic with a tortured history with athletics. I am the glasses-clad, graceless girl afraid of the volleyball who was always chosen last in gym class. Accordingly, running helped me find a new kind of self-love and confidence. As a sport, recreational running is inclusive, individual and incremental. It’s available to all ages and abilities, all sexes, sizes and shapes. One race cures the intimidated participant who witnesses a wave of different people mixing together with a common purpose.

While running is certainly competitive, the goal is individual achievement, not adversarial triumph. For the 99% of runners who have no expectation of winning, the race is against yourself, against the clock. It’s about setting realistic expectations and working hard, bit-by-bit, goal-by-goal, to achieve them. It’s about convincing yourself to carry on when you’re tired and about learning to treat your body well.

In the few races I have run, I have always felt embraced and encouraged by others. When you run even one race of any distance, you become a “runner.” The competitors are supportive: “Good work, runners,” they’ll call to you as you pass, happily sharing their label, graciously admitting you into the club. People on the sidelines cheer, “Stay strong, runners. Finish hard.”

Still, despite my better understanding of running, our relationship still feels more like tolerance, more like coexistence and less like fondness. I still approach training with a feeling of requirement. I still rarely achieve a high. I find it easy to justify a shortcut when my legs hurt or when I’m not feeling up to par.

And, two weeks ago, when I ran my first half-marathon, I learned that Running will not tolerate my disrespect.

After running the Ten Mile last fall, a half-marathon seemed reachable. Never a math whiz, I simply thought “If you can run ten miles, you can run 13.” Nevermind I was fresh off my holiday break, in which I’d traded running for eating for several weeks.

No, instead of the constant and considered way I trained for the my first ten mile, I approached preparation for the half in the same procrastinative way I used to approach my schoolwork. I tried cramming it all in on the cusp of the deadline. I jumped in at week 7 of the 12 week program and forced myself to do the long runs.

Running long distance requires patience, pacing, diligence and commitment. So while I managed (barely) to finish the half-marathon, I didn’t experience the joy running provided me on that first run. I failed to meet my time goal, but worse, I felt terrible – tired, sick and dehydrated. I pictured running looking at me silently like my favorite professor: You got by, but you didn’t fool me. You are capable of better.

Despite my showing at the half marathon, I hope to run the ten mile again this fall. While I still don’t always look forward to running, I always feel like a better person for having done it. We’re still a little tortured, but I’m not ready to give up on it just yet.

Last year at this time I wasn’t a runner. In fact, well into the spring of last year, I hated Running.  During the early parts of my training for last fall’s Twin Cities Ten Mile, I had to give myself strange assignments (like silently, and geekily, reciting the Periodic Table of Elements) to help pass the time when I was running, to keep me moving, to avoid thinking about how much I hated it. 

Throughout my training, I kept waiting to feel that “high” that runners always talk about.  I kept waiting to experience that “lost time” where I just wandered into my thoughts oblivious to my aching legs and burning lungs and forgot I was running.  Unfortunately, it never really happened. 

To be honest, even when I ran the Ten Miler, the first half went okay, but I spent miles 6-9 arguing with running.  The mantra Boy, running sure sucks would start to creep into my head, and I would push it away.  At about mile 7, when I couldn’t keep pace with my friend D. any more, Running and I got into an argument. 

“You’re right,” Running said, “this does suck, why don’t you just walk.”  And I said, “*&&^ you, Running. I gave birth to nine pound babies. I can do anything for twenty more minutes.”   

Despite the argument, I was elated to finish, and looking forward to keeping up my training.  But I sort of fell off the wagon, and I really hadn’t run, at least not for any length or with much consistency, since the race – until last Saturday, when I crawled back on. 

As it happens, by the time I got out running on Saturday, I really had myself all worked up about a number of personal issues, including, of course my purported crisis de blog about which I’ve been whining endlessly.  Somewhere around mile 2  it occurred to me that I have a nasty need for purpose and structure that sometimes holds me back.  It occurred to me that  I don’t really need to have A Great Bloggy Plan.  I don’t really need to know why I’m writing or for whom.  The thing about the format of the weblog is that I can just blog when I can about what I can … just because I like it, and that’s reason enough.    

The fact that this came as a complete shock to me should give you some insight into one of my faults (one those who know me observe frequently) – I can spend a whole lot of time analyzing, worrying and stressing my way to conclusions that seem quite obvious.

I was still mulling all that over Saturday during my run when I suddenly realized that I’d run more than a mile without paying any attention at all to Running.  I had made it to the end of my goal  without thinking about Running once.  Not only was I lost in my brain, oblivious to the physical strain, but I also had such endorphin-induced clarity of vision. 

As I walked to the car, smiling and contemplating all this, Running piped up enthusiastically, “So, Leo, does this mean we’re finally friends now?”

“Nope,” I replied, “We’re still not friends.  Now, Running, you’re totally my bitch.”

Of course, I ran less than half as far, didn’t look quite as adorable in my running attire, and spent the rest of the day week unable to move my legs. Whereas, Katie just showered up, threw on some black open-toed heels, and headed out to a movie premiere. But, otherwise, we’re basically the same person.

Likewise, Hal Higdon’s program had me pretty low key this week. I wish I had gotten around to ordering a “Support the Rabid” bracelet, and I should have bought new shoes. But, otherwise, I’ve done okay. I did the training – or about 80% of it. Nothing to do now but put my body where my drunken mouthful of lemon cake was three months ago.

I might have more to say, but I’m resting today. By late tomorrow morning, I’ll either be passed out somewhere on Summit Avenue in St. Paul, or an official, card-carrying “runner.”

edited 10/7/07 to add: I did it!! I’m so excited. A detailed report to follow, as soon as I regain movement in my lower extremities.

Yes, I am still running. No, I still don’t like it all that much. And, Holy Crap, I have to run from the Metrodome to the Capitol! More on it all later, but I understand, due to my lack of posting, a few people were wondering whether I’d given up on Running. I haven’t. It’s just that I’m the slowest runner EVIR, and so the training takes up a good chunk of my blogging time.