It’s good for your mental and physical health, and doesn’t require any equipment. So why does it seem so hard to get started?
Until last week, the only time I’d finished a race was during Track and Field Day in fifth grade. By middle school, I was trying to figure out how to get out of gym class because it was too hard for me to run a mile. Sports, in general, were not my thing. Running, less so.
As an adult, I have gone to the gyms, taken exercise classes and worked with trainers. But none of it ever brought me joy, or made me want to keep doing such things. The most sustained exercise I did in the past decade was a regimen of deep knee bends with a colicky baby in my arms after my first kid was born.
Then lockdowns came along, and I surprised everyone in my house, especially myself, by signing up to join a local running group which had moved from holding local meetups to checking in with each other virtually. Because it was exercise I could do alone, the conditions were ideal.
But for a newcomer to running, the notion that you can just throw on a pair of sneakers and hit the road turns out to be a big, fat lie, I assume created by people who started running after giving up soccer or basketball.
Every
time, I have to push myself to run that horrible first minute. I get
breathless. Muscles I didn’t know I had now ache like I never thought
possible. I feel self-conscious when a neighbor spots me bouncing down
the street. And yet, I stick with it. I can now run 20 minutes in a row,
and they are not
Here were a few of the things I learned that have helped me to get out the door — and keep going even when I would much rather stop for an infusion of iced coffee.
Let cynicism go.
If you are the type who smirks at inspirational quotations on Instagram, set aside that part of your brain for the entirety of a run. I now understand why fitness instructors are so often relentlessly earnest. You need positive messages to get through the hard parts of working out.
Try a simple thought exercise recommended by Coffey, a filmmaker and the founder of DeFine New York Run Club. Ask yourself, “What’s my why?” and “What’s my purpose?” Coffey’s “why” was to get in shape; his purpose was to be able to keep up with his three young children. “I want to be energized when they want to play,” he said. “I don’t want to be the parent who says ‘I can’t.’”
Get a voice in your head.
To invite such positivity into my own cold dark heart, I take the outdoor running classes in the Peloton app, which is less expensive than their stationary bikes or treadmills. For 20 to 60 minutes I get an instructor in my ear keeping me going, playing his or her favorite music and sharing running tips or suggesting when to walk.
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