Рецепт Exercise: It's Never too Late to Start to Run
Adrienne and friend after an 8 mile run in San Francisco
We're always getting ready to live, but never living. ~Ralph Waldo Emerson
Today is your lucky day! MindfulEats receives the occassional comment from people who don't think they can start exercising/eating healthy/changing their habits because they're "too old."
One of my former bosses, the always inspirational Adrienne Crowther, guest blogs on how she started running at 45. Adrienne gets s**t done, and she does it with so much enthusiasm and fun she inspires those around her. She inspires me so much that when we were skiing at Alta I tore my ACL trying to impress her (and she was nice enough to get ski patrol for me too, but that's another story).
I think I insulted her when I received her e-mail about training for a half-marathon, and I instantly wrote back to ask her to write a blog post on what it was like to start running "later in life." What she doesn't know is that anyone who didn't start running (and keep running) track in Junior High started running later in life. I ran hurdles in 8th grade, but I quit after one season and never ran regularly again until I was 24. At that time lots of "real" runners started asking me what it was like to start running later in life. On the other end, I have a friend who's father just started running again at 72 after taking a few years off.
The point is, if we could pick up a new hobby as an adult, you definitely can too. So, without further ado:
I was asked to guest blog about what it’s like to pick up running… "later in life." After my complete shock and horror at realizing that I’ve reached the ‘later in life’ stage – here it goes:
Full disclosure – I’m 45 and ever since I had my kids I can honestly say that I’m not particularly fit. I will occasionally bike, hike or ski… but I’ve always said that I cannot run and that I feel like a dork when I do! I’ve tried to run -- I think my greatest achievement was three quarters of a mile, then either pain or boredom got the better of me and I would walk. Walking is better for my body anyway…right? (That’s me justifying that I shouldn’t be running). The annoying thing was that most of my friends ran, and insisted that I too could run. But I KNEW that MY body wasn’t built for running (unlike theirs).
So, one night I was watching John Stewart and he interviewed the author of Born to Run: Christopher McDougall. This is a great book with an amazing story, but one of the things I took away from it is that in fact, humans are born to run. Wow, we are actually engineered to be runners. But why then did I still have that ‘can’t get past the pain’ issue? So, before taking one step…I next read Chi Running. The punch-line of this book is that we might be engineered to run, but by the time we’re adults, we forget how to, so we need to learn how to run properly so we don’t hurt ourselves. Granted, the whole time I was reading about running, I could have been running – something my super fit husband liked to tell me…a lot! But these books gave me the confidence and the tools to get out there and give it a real try.
I think everyone’s story is a little different… I needed three things to get going:
Confirmation that running is natural
Knowledge that it’s ok to feel like you need some tips to run properly
Friends keep inspired and motivated
Some days it feels really amazing to be out running – other days it’s a slog – but either way, I know I can do this.
What I ate: [bad day!] 1 grapefruit, 1 cafe au lait, 1 hard-boiled egg, Kashi Go Lean cereal + skim nymilk, whole wheat spaghetti + sauteed squash + goat cheese, Mindful Mix, macadamia nuts, 5 Tate's Cookies, Masala Tea Ice Cream (and a little vanilla & chocolate), 1 slice Two Boots margarita pizza, 5 dried apricots, 12 Food Should Taste Good cheese chips, quinoa, steamed chard + tofu, hot chocolate, 40 oz water
Exercise: 90 min yoga