30 'til 30 Day 8: Run, Sarah, Run

The first time I ever laced up my running shoes was the summer before 9th grade when my father made me go out for the cross country team.

Since Jimbo (as we now have taken to calling my dad) is a professional jock for Jesus (he's been on staff with the Fellowship of Christian Athletes since I was 3), I wound up being an FCA leader in middle school, despite my lack of any general athletic ability. But when I started high school, Dad pushed me to try a sport, since I was really supposed to be an athlete to be a leader of Christian Athletes. 

I picked cross country because it was the only team that didn't cut anyone.

It would be such a great story to say that cross country transformed me from a slow, clumsy non-athlete to a track star, but that's not what happened. I started at the back of the pack, barely able to run one mile, much less 3.1. And, though I eventually was able to finish the whole course, I pretty much brought up the rear in every meet for the entire length of my cross country career.

But I liked the other girls on the team, some of the boys were cute, and pasta parties the night before meets were a ton of fun. So, for no other motivation than socialization, I came back and ran again as a sophomore. That year the coach told me that if I could focus on my running as much as my flirting I might actually be able to get somewhere in this sport.

I was pretty much done after that. 

I came to a few summer conditioning practices before junior year, remembered that the Theatre Department was doing The Taming of the Shrew in the fall, and officially quit cross country as soon as the cast list went up (take a wild guess who I played...). I also discovered Antonin Artaud's quote: "Actors are the athletes of the heart," and managed to make a solid case for staying an FCA leader in spite of my departure from jockdom.

It wasn't until college that I dared to run again. This time, I started running less as an athletic pursuit and more as a means of stress-relief. I was surprised to discover that without the competition component of the sport, I actually didn't hate  getting out into the fresh air and moving my legs. My senior year, a friend and I signed up to run the monument 10K, which I somehow managed to finish in one hour- a huge accomplishment given that my personal best time for a 5k in high school was pretty close to 30 minutes.

Since then, I've been more inconsistent in my running habits, but I still manage to get myself moving from time to time. When I was in Seattle, I especially loved running in Queen Anne, finding hidden staircases and park views of the city and, on the rare clear day, the Olympic mountains. I'm looking forward to hitting the pavement in my new neighborhood, which is also full of city views and a staircase or two.

With 30 on the horizon, I know that getting into good physical habits is more important than ever (she writes while still sitting in bed in her pajamas as noon approaches), and running is the cheapest way to break a sweat... so I suppose there's no better moment to get out there than today...