This is a personal account of an individual's struggle to change their sedentary lifestyle and become a runner. They detail their experience with a run club and the challenges they faced, including physical discomfort and mental obstacles. Despite setbacks, they express a growing determination to persevere and improve their fitness.
It was desperate times that forced me to turn to run clubs. As a naturally unathletic person, joining a run club is about as radical a move as I could make – but I had to do something. In July, I had an episode of atrial fibrillation, a medical issue where your heart beats to the wrong rhythm for an extended period. I was in hospital for three days while my heart raced at more than double the normal heart rate, the odd glow of the monitor haunting me.
To get it back into a normal rhythm, I required an electric shock. The chipper emergency doctors at Canterbury hospital reassured me it was a normal treatment – despite feeding me a cocktail of drugs and standing over my head “in case my heart stopped”. Thankfully it worked, but it was cumulatively a nightmare, the kind of experience that is supposed to change me. My cardiologist, very casually, said the best I can do to prevent another episode was to get fit, ignoring my despair. As someone who hates the gym, I needed something more; something that I hoped would motivate me, something I could perhaps enjoy. And suddenly finding myself on a healthy diet, no longer able to smoke or drink endless cups of coffee, a runner’s high sounded intriguing. That’s what brought me to the unusual position of standing among the hundreds of weekly runners on a Saturday morning, in shorts and trainers, stretching and wondering how long 5km really was. My first impression of Cooks River parkrun was shock at the sheer number of people who turn up. Nearly 200 people were there the first week I ran, a truly astounding number of people willing to run in circles at 8am on Saturday. Parkrun, a deeply organised event put together by a surprisingly high number of volunteers, involves running four laps along a prescribed section of pathway along the Cooks River from St Mary Mackillop Reserve. Each lap is 1.25km. I know this because I counted every inch of it the first time I ran it. It was a truly horrendous experience, one that made me question the glee with which my editors agreed to this piece. Everything hurt within two minutes of starting. My legs were burning, my chest heaving, my head spinning. So I would slow down – but the outrage that people felt comfortable enough to pass me would stir me into speeding up again. By the first lap, I was hands-on-hips done. “Who does this?” I asked myself, watching people lap me in disbelief. Where was my high? Where was the breakthrough? I dragged myself through the second lap and threw in the towel, cursing every runner ahead of me as I trudged off. In the second week, I arrived early enough to know I should be stretching. Perhaps, I believed, this was how I could maintain a good rhythm and get past the pain. After moving past the awkward few minutes where I Googled “how to stretch before run”, and then searched it again on TikTok (what if I was doing it wrong? I had to see it in motion), I began stretching as prescribed. Surely this would all be worth it. We lined up, we started running, and I began with a nice, consistent jog. This had to be it, I thought. This had to be how I enjoy this. For four minutes, life was blissful, the sun shone and I was a runner, so soon after starting as well! I barely made it past the 250m mark. Puffed out and barely able to walk, I somehow felt more defeated than the first week. Admiration for the runners began to seep into my seething resentment as I trudged the rest of the way. Recognising that the main problem here was my lack of fitness, and driven by my need to beat some of those runners, I had begun attending the gym. Is this what changing your life looks like? This time, I went in with no expectations. I knew I couldn’t keep up, and my goal was just to go for longer than the first two weeks. I would alternate jogging and walking as a means to try to keep going. At some point, my thoughts began to melt away. All I could think about was my breathing, the pain in my legs and the sweat dripping on to my glasses. By the second lap, I was depleted – but for the first time in a very long time, also thoughtless. Rain. Joyful, gorgeous rain. I stood on my balcony and basked in the dreary weather. With zero guilt, I returned to bed. Can’t run in the rain, right? Much too dangerous
RUNNING FITNESS HEALTH ATTITUDE CHALLENGE EXERCISE WELLNESS HABIT CHANGE
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