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summer 2025
Chapter 3
Monday, July 7th
My plan for today was to start back at square one. I was going to go back and do the same workout I did on my very first day of this journey. After a rough couple of weeks with no running, there was something poetic about it. But when I hit the sidewalk, I suddenly changed my entire plan.
On June 16th, I did thirty minutes of intervals where I would run for thirty seconds and then walk for one minute. Today, I did ten minutes of intervals where I ran for a minute and then walked for thirty seconds and then ten minutes of intervals where I ran for a minute and walked for a minute. This is by far the highest ratio of running to walking I have done on any of my outings so far. And you know what? This is also the hardest run I have done by far.
I would like to believe that this change of plan is in part a response to my worries about taking two weeks off for illness. My ultimate goal of running three miles has gone from moderately challenging to very challenging. I am going to need to kick things into gear if I still want to make it. But I think that there is also a part of me that was pretty embarrassed to stop running after thirty seconds. The sidewalks were much busier than usual today and my thirty seconds of running often meant that other pedestrians could see my entire running interval. A minute of running gave me enough time to make it around a corner and out of sight. As far as that family I ran past knew, I might have kept running for hours!
***
Thursday, July 10th
My plan today was to try to go forty minutes alternating between running one minute and walking one minute. I did not make it. Five minutes in, I was worried I wasn’t even going to make it halfway. Eventually, I decided that thirty minutes would be a more attainable goal. And by “a more attainable goal,” I really mean that if I ran any more I would have collapsed into a pile of goo.
Halfway through my run, my hands were so sweaty I could barely open my water bottle. When I got home, my partner asked me if I got caught in the rain. (The rain actually held off another hour so that it could catch me when I was carrying groceries home from the store.) Now that a couple of hours have passed since my run, I am not feeling tired and sweaty. I just feel like I got beat up.
One of the more frustrating parts of getting sick for two weeks is that I am having to go through the really difficult beginning stage twice. I understand that even people who run every day for years will still experience soreness and tiredness. But surely even they’d agree that the first week growing pains are a particularly difficult time. Now that I am four weeks into this, I have only had growing pains and illness.
If you can’t tell, I’m fucking fed up today.
***
Saturday, July 12th
I bailed on my planned run for today. I have a dozen excuses why, but the truth is that I didn’t want to do it. So I didn’t.
Right now, I am really butting up against the fact that I do not like to run. There have probably been a half dozen times in my life when I tried to get into running, and it never lasted more than a month. Only three of those attempts are from what I would consider to be my adult life. All three times, my goal was to run a 5k. And, as those of you with a working knowledge of the metric system know, that is pretty much my goal now. When I first started writing about trying to run three miles, it seemed like a way to make this thing I didn’t want to do a little more fun. But now, I have handcuffed myself to something that I hate. I tried it and disliked it multiple times in the past. So why would I think it would be a good idea to make myself try again?
One of the reasons that I thought this whole project would be a good idea was because I thought that it would feel good to take on a quantifiable goal and work to accomplish it. So many of my goals are artistic, which means that in reality they are closer to hopes than goals. I want something to be funny or interesting or beautiful and then I do my best. But there is no way to measure that. There is no interesting ruler. I can’t make a story seven units of funny. Generally, I just work on something until I feel decent about it and see my deadline approaching. But if I run three miles, it will be pretty clear that I ran three miles. I don’t know what I hope to feel when I reach that goal, but I hoped it would make me feel something.
The downside of such a clear goal is it is so much clearer when you do not reach it. And as of right now, I am really looking down the barrel of not meeting that goal. I am still doing interval workouts with quite a bit of walking and those workouts are covering less than three miles. It isn’t hopeless, but things aren’t looking good.
I have responded to this potential disappointment by desperately looking for cheats and loopholes. My favorite cheat so far is that I could run three individual miles. Maybe three days in a row. Maybe three in one day. I guess it kinda depends on how far I’ve made it in my training. On one hand, I know that this is cheating. But on the other hand, I would rather cheat than finish this project with some sappy message about how we might not always reach our goals, but that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t try. To me, that is the worst case scenario.
If I do truly fail, my truest hope is that I don’t have anything hopeful to say about it at all.
***
Monday, July 14th
Yesterday, I went out for an hour. I did intervals of running for thirty seconds and then walking for one minute. In total, I covered over four miles. Towards the end of the run, I really felt like I could keep going. Genuinely, this feels like a sign that my ultimate goal is still possible. Sure, I spent more time walking than running, but isn’t that true for most of us in our lives? I feel like the biggest mistake I could make right now is to get too realistic about how much further I still have to go in the next few weeks. Denial, denial, denial.
Yesterday was also my first experience of runner’s high. About forty-five minutes into my run, I started to feel something…intoxicant-adjacent. I wouldn’t call it euphoric (or even fun), but it did remind me of being at a drunk college party and not really remembering how long I’d been in the bathroom. I wasn’t blacking out, more spacing out. I’d find myself running across an intersection and wonder, “Wait, did I check for cars? Was I careful stepping off the curb? How did I get here?”
So far, running seems like a pretty worthless drug. It has none of the fun and all of the worry that you might twist your ankle.
Tonight I am going to try to gently jog one mile straight. Fingers crossed.
My plan for today was to start back at square one. I was going to go back and do the same workout I did on my very first day of this journey. After a rough couple of weeks with no running, there was something poetic about it. But when I hit the sidewalk, I suddenly changed my entire plan.
On June 16th, I did thirty minutes of intervals where I would run for thirty seconds and then walk for one minute. Today, I did ten minutes of intervals where I ran for a minute and then walked for thirty seconds and then ten minutes of intervals where I ran for a minute and walked for a minute. This is by far the highest ratio of running to walking I have done on any of my outings so far. And you know what? This is also the hardest run I have done by far.
I would like to believe that this change of plan is in part a response to my worries about taking two weeks off for illness. My ultimate goal of running three miles has gone from moderately challenging to very challenging. I am going to need to kick things into gear if I still want to make it. But I think that there is also a part of me that was pretty embarrassed to stop running after thirty seconds. The sidewalks were much busier than usual today and my thirty seconds of running often meant that other pedestrians could see my entire running interval. A minute of running gave me enough time to make it around a corner and out of sight. As far as that family I ran past knew, I might have kept running for hours!
***
Thursday, July 10th
My plan today was to try to go forty minutes alternating between running one minute and walking one minute. I did not make it. Five minutes in, I was worried I wasn’t even going to make it halfway. Eventually, I decided that thirty minutes would be a more attainable goal. And by “a more attainable goal,” I really mean that if I ran any more I would have collapsed into a pile of goo.
Halfway through my run, my hands were so sweaty I could barely open my water bottle. When I got home, my partner asked me if I got caught in the rain. (The rain actually held off another hour so that it could catch me when I was carrying groceries home from the store.) Now that a couple of hours have passed since my run, I am not feeling tired and sweaty. I just feel like I got beat up.
One of the more frustrating parts of getting sick for two weeks is that I am having to go through the really difficult beginning stage twice. I understand that even people who run every day for years will still experience soreness and tiredness. But surely even they’d agree that the first week growing pains are a particularly difficult time. Now that I am four weeks into this, I have only had growing pains and illness.
If you can’t tell, I’m fucking fed up today.
***
Saturday, July 12th
I bailed on my planned run for today. I have a dozen excuses why, but the truth is that I didn’t want to do it. So I didn’t.
Right now, I am really butting up against the fact that I do not like to run. There have probably been a half dozen times in my life when I tried to get into running, and it never lasted more than a month. Only three of those attempts are from what I would consider to be my adult life. All three times, my goal was to run a 5k. And, as those of you with a working knowledge of the metric system know, that is pretty much my goal now. When I first started writing about trying to run three miles, it seemed like a way to make this thing I didn’t want to do a little more fun. But now, I have handcuffed myself to something that I hate. I tried it and disliked it multiple times in the past. So why would I think it would be a good idea to make myself try again?
One of the reasons that I thought this whole project would be a good idea was because I thought that it would feel good to take on a quantifiable goal and work to accomplish it. So many of my goals are artistic, which means that in reality they are closer to hopes than goals. I want something to be funny or interesting or beautiful and then I do my best. But there is no way to measure that. There is no interesting ruler. I can’t make a story seven units of funny. Generally, I just work on something until I feel decent about it and see my deadline approaching. But if I run three miles, it will be pretty clear that I ran three miles. I don’t know what I hope to feel when I reach that goal, but I hoped it would make me feel something.
The downside of such a clear goal is it is so much clearer when you do not reach it. And as of right now, I am really looking down the barrel of not meeting that goal. I am still doing interval workouts with quite a bit of walking and those workouts are covering less than three miles. It isn’t hopeless, but things aren’t looking good.
I have responded to this potential disappointment by desperately looking for cheats and loopholes. My favorite cheat so far is that I could run three individual miles. Maybe three days in a row. Maybe three in one day. I guess it kinda depends on how far I’ve made it in my training. On one hand, I know that this is cheating. But on the other hand, I would rather cheat than finish this project with some sappy message about how we might not always reach our goals, but that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t try. To me, that is the worst case scenario.
If I do truly fail, my truest hope is that I don’t have anything hopeful to say about it at all.
***
Monday, July 14th
Yesterday, I went out for an hour. I did intervals of running for thirty seconds and then walking for one minute. In total, I covered over four miles. Towards the end of the run, I really felt like I could keep going. Genuinely, this feels like a sign that my ultimate goal is still possible. Sure, I spent more time walking than running, but isn’t that true for most of us in our lives? I feel like the biggest mistake I could make right now is to get too realistic about how much further I still have to go in the next few weeks. Denial, denial, denial.
Yesterday was also my first experience of runner’s high. About forty-five minutes into my run, I started to feel something…intoxicant-adjacent. I wouldn’t call it euphoric (or even fun), but it did remind me of being at a drunk college party and not really remembering how long I’d been in the bathroom. I wasn’t blacking out, more spacing out. I’d find myself running across an intersection and wonder, “Wait, did I check for cars? Was I careful stepping off the curb? How did I get here?”
So far, running seems like a pretty worthless drug. It has none of the fun and all of the worry that you might twist your ankle.
Tonight I am going to try to gently jog one mile straight. Fingers crossed.
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