My Lesson for Today: Do the work; reap the benefit.

"A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step." - From the quote by Chinese Guru Laozi

I’ve been running for almost a year. I started out just doing two minute intervals with walking, then tried a full mile (which knocked me on my butt). Now I’m up to 14 miles and I’m training to race a half-marathon (13.1 miles/21.1km). I have been following professional plans and advice by Coach Kent including long runs, fast runs, slow runs, etc. I’ll let you in on a little secret, though: I still don’t like running.

Running is hard. It makes me sweat. It makes my legs feel tired. It takes time out of my day that could be spent doing other things. And no matter how many runs I do, how many miles I log, running continues to be hard. It never gets easy.

So why do I continue to do it day after day? Well, even though I don’t particularly like running, I love what it does for me. It relieves stress. It releases endorphins. It keeps me healthy. It makes me feel good about myself. It lets me justify the occasional treats. It clearly displays my improvements in no uncertain terms.

I was knocked flat by one slow mile almost a year ago and now I’m racing a half marathon. I ran one mile as fast as I could (9 minutes) last winter and now my fastest mile is 6:30 minutes. I used to dread “long” runs of 5.5 miles, and now I’m feeling pretty confident about 14. My effort has stayed the same (hence the feeling that running is still always hard) but my gains have increased so much! My fastest mile is still just as hard now as it was a year ago, but now my speed is much better. My longest mile still takes just as much out of me as it used to, but now it’s so much farther.

What running has taught me - and is continuing to teach me - is that if I do the work, I will reap the benefit. I know this sounds simple and common-sensical, almost to the point of ridiculous. Of course we all know this. But I guess sometimes I forget. When it feels hard (and this could be anything; from running, to dieting, to working, to parenting) it’s easy to just keep in mind how hard it is. But when I do it anyway, suck it up and put in the effort needed, I gain a little bit. I don’t know it yet, but the next time will be easier and better, and the next after that. Little by little I make gains and reap the rewards of hard work.

Striving for success without hard work is like trying to harvest where you haven’t planted - David Bly