What’s on my bucket list of 101 things I want to do before I die? Write a comedy. Yes. Play the harp. Maybe. Run a race. Never in a million years. Even when I signed up for a Learn to Run program recently, I had no intention of participating in the race event concluding the ten-week program.
“Not interested in running a race,” I said to my instructor on the first Monday night. “I totally don’t care about how far or fast I can run. And I hate competition.”
“Okay,” she said without a trace of reproach. She tugged on her white baseball cap to shield her eyes from the glare of the setting sun.
“I just want to be able run. You know, in case I ever need to,” I told her.
“Are you expecting to need to?” she asked, fastening a small water bottle on her wrist, one of those new-age sports gadgets I’d never seen before. She pressed the start button on her stopwatch programmed for one minute intervals. “And we’re running,” she announced to the group.
Over the next two months, the run times increased by one minute per week. As my endurance level improved, I felt those rigid mental blocks formed in childhood shifting, like tectonic plates preparing to erupt. My legs no longer seemed like wooden beams banging against the pavement. Soon participating in the CIBC Run for the Cure with the other novice runners in my group seemed possible. And then, on a Sunday morning in early October, as the orange-yellow leaves fluttered to the ground, I found myself lining up with thousands of others to run a 5k race. (Read about my race day experience at Inanna Publications Blog)
How did I get there? I hadn’t given the process much thought. In fact, during the training sessions I wasn’t thinking about anything more than running to the next stop sign or counting the For Sale signs on the lawns of the upscale homes we passed. Yet, whether I knew it or not, a change process was underway. The Running Room supplied a strategy that avoided the grueling intensity of the extreme fitness trend and provided an instructor who functioned more as a cheerleader than a drill sergeant. She neither goaded us into submission, nor barked orders from behind.
“Three minutes left,” she called out. “Almost there.”
“Thank you, Andrea,” we puffed in response.
Every journey needs a book. As the author Ann Quindlen once wrote: “Books are the plane, and the train, and the road.” On my running journey, What Makes Olga Run, was the book that took me from nowhere to home. Olga in the book title is the accomplished Canadian athlete Olga Kotelko, who began her track and field career in her late seventies. She was competing in the long jump, shot put, javelin throw and sprints into her eighties and nineties. When she died at ninety-five years old, Olga held twenty-six world records in her age category. Her secret: a life of moderation, exercise and a positive attitude. “I choose,” she said in an interview, “not to let the dark stuff have a negative effect on me.”
To complete the 5k Run for the Cure, I borrowed Olga’s determination. Somehow I don’t think she’d mind if I keep it.