In High School my friend Marty was super lazy. I mean a real slug (Marty – if you somehow are reading this; sorry but it’s true!). He used to say he was tired from napping so much that he needed another nap. Then Marty went to college and something changed. Marty up and decided to start running. Marty began to look amazingly fit. You know that tanned fitness model with boundless energy fit – that was Marty after he started running. So I decided that if Marty – formerly the laziest person on the planet – could transform himself into a runner, then so could I.
One of the great things about running is pretty much all you need are shoes and something to wear. I started by trying to get around the block without having to walk. Once I could do that, I added another block. Eventually I could run a couple of miles. I didn’t decide to start entering races right away, but eventually I ran a local 5K, and it was really fun. Then I met and began dating a fairly dedicated runner and we would go to races for fun.
Maybe I’m naive, but I’ve generally found if I decide I want to do something I don’t see the obstacles in my way. I blithely trot forward until I’m knee deep in whatever it is – riding my bike (with streamers on the handles of course!) across town for Zip’s ice cream when I was eight, moving to Atlanta before landing a job, running a marathon six months after bunion surgeries, knitting my first sweater after only basic instruction – you get the picture. And for the most part everything has worked out just fine.
So the point of this stream of consciousness is that it’s not so much the doing of the thing, it’s the deciding to do it. That’s kind of how I explained to people that would say “oh, I could never run a marathon”. Of course you can’t… until you put your mind to do it!
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