I Did It.

Tonight, I finished Week 5 of C25K with a 20 minute run. No breaks to walk. No slowing. No giving up or giving in to the voice telling me that my calves were burning and my lungs were tired and anyways no one would know if I really ran all 20 minutes, would they? I won't lie about it, to myself or anyone else who cares: it sucked. This week's podcast has all 3 days overlapped, so that you download one podcast for 3 completely different runs. At one point, I was almost to the end and all I could think was, "You are so close. Just keep running." And then, on the haedphones came that damn voice saying, "If you're on Day 3, keep going! You have about 4 minutes left." At that moment I was thankful I'd decided to finish the last of the runs at 10:30 at night rather than waiting for tomorrow to do it in the daylight. Because, in the daylight, I would have needed to look around to be sure there were no small children in earshot before exclaiming out loud, to the universe, "Fuck you!"

Oh yeah, I said "Fuck you!" to the podcast. To my legs, on fire and lead-heavy. To Robert Ullrey and running and the universe in general.

But then, there was the moment at the end, when I got to celebrate completing 20 minutes of running. When I walked the neighborhood listening to Mumford and Sons and felt my legs tingling and my heart pumping and my face, flush with sweat. When I said to myself, "Fuck YOU, and your doubting. You did it. YOU did it!"

Five weeks ago, I couldn't even run 90 seconds without feeling like I needed to go home and ice my shins and sleep for 14 hours. Five weeks ago I dreaded every run. Six weeks ago, I wasn't even trying. And now? I did it.