The Treadmill, The Blerch, and Me

With the weather turning colder and my schedule tighter than a stretched canvas I have resorted to running on the treadmill twice a week. I still get a nice road run in on Saturdays but the gym is between dropping off kid 2 and work so it's easier to stop in a have a quick run than go all the way home. This has caused some difficulty with my Blerch. If you are unfamiliar with the Blerch I shall direct you to The Oatmeal. Anyway, it is difficult to out run ones Blerch while on a treadmill. Mine spends the entire run sitting on top of the display saying things like:

"oh, isn't that enough? You must have burned off at least a whole cake by now!"

"That's far enough, I mean, most people didn't even go to the gym today." 

or the very tricky one, "you don't have time for this! You will be late for work!" 

He also encourages me to stop looking at the display as he knows it motivates me to go just a bit further/faster/longer. He tells me that I can stop at any time because I am on a treadmill so I don't have to turn around and go back. 

I have decided that this is why most people do not like the treadmill. It's not because it's boring, (let me tell you, looking at house after house or the same route day after day is just as bad) it's because you have to stare your Blerch in the face. You have to look right at it and say NO! I am going to stay on this human sized hamster wheel so I can get stronger. I don't care what you say I am going to finish and I am going to do MORE. 

I'm a Runner?

So today I was thinking while on the treadmill. I know, right? Well I had forgotten my headphones so there was a lot of me thinking over bad gym music looking at the T.V. with no sound. I started thinking about my running journey. I have just re-started running for like the fourth time in the last ten years (this hiatus due to pregnancy) and I did 3.25 miles at a 14:17 average pace. Not too far and not too fast but I'm still a runner.

In fact, since taking my first purposeful steps in January 2004 part of me has been a runner. I have been a runner since I realized that I don't have to be fast to be a runner. I don't have to be thin or run 20 miles a week to be a runner. Thanks to John Bingham I realized that even doing run/walk intervals I was/am a runner. The only thing required to be a runner is to move your body with intent.

Some people (once myself included) are afraid to call themselves runners because they don't live up to the assumptions that many people have about who/what a runner is. This I have found is silly. In fact The Oatmeal makes it seem very silly indeed. So, for the record I AM A RUNNER!

Once I realized that I could be a runner I wanted to run a race. However, before I could run a race I had to realize that the only person I would be racing is myself. I have never been a terribly competitive person, I generally cave at the idea that I will inevitably loose. I give up and just figure everyone else is better at XYZ than I am (for the most part this isn't actually as depressing as it sounds because I don't give a crap about being good at XYZ anyway). The glory of running a race is that I'm not racing anyone else. The only one who CAN win is me. Regardless of if I beat my fastest time or I was faster before I WIN! I will never be the absolute fastest in any race but that isn't why I run. I run to go further than I have before, or faster, or to glory in feeling my body move and get stronger. I race to challenge myself not to prove anything to anyone else. Racing isn't a competition, it's a benchmark, a goal, an achievement.