I’d never run in my life. Why would I start now?

When I first joined the “Run a 5K in 2012” page earlier this year, I thought “What
in the world???”. I mean, I’d never run in my life. Why would I start now?
A co-worker of mine asked if I wanted to run the Color Run in San Francisco later
in the summer and I decided that might be fun. But that would mean I actually
had to be ready to run a 5K. A 5K??? Seriously? That seemed like an awful long
way. I highly doubted I’d ever be able to accomplish that.
So I started to run. Not too far at first. But each time it became easier. At that
point, I didn’t even know how many miles a 5K was. After one of my runs, I came
home and checked it out on an online conversion chart and was shocked to find
that I’d just run a 5K. Woohoo! I didn’t even realize that the loop I was running
through my neighborhood was 3.25 miles. Perfect!
“Run a 5K in 2012” continued to post encouraging messages, not only to me,
but to their other members as well. On days where I might not have felt quite like
running, I’d see a post that would encourage me to get up off my butt and run. Of
course, after my run I’d always feel so much better.
I ran my first 5K on April 15 and it felt AWESOME! I’m signed up for 3 more this
year and am planning to add a few more to my calendar.
Now I look forward to posting my results and seeing the feedback. It makes me
want to do better. I might not be anywhere close to running anything other than
a 5K, but I love knowing that I have an entire support team in “RA5Kin2012-land”
and always look forward to the responses.