The 6-Minute Hurdle

I have a new hobby. Yes, I know I've said that before fairly recently, and although decorating was a fun hobby for those 2 weeks, I'm on to something better. I'm a runner now (cough cough). One week and one 5K race down. This is, however, more of a revisitation of an old hobby. I used to be a runner. It's easy to run all over Timbuktu when you weigh a buck-o-nine. Not so much the case anymore. Thankfully, though, I am taking many of the lessons I learned in high school with me now...like the 6-minute hurdle.

I remember it well. The first 6 minutes of the run are deadly for me. So bad I can't even cuss about it because they don't make words strong enough. (That's when I start to make them up...like "crapindiculous"...which I said MANY times during the race yesterday..."What the heck am I doing running in this race - it's crapindiculous!" But I know that if I can make it 6 minutes, then I can turn on my cruise control for a while. I look at my watch about the time my breathing begins to regulate, my legs start feeling good, and it always says somewhere in the 6 minute range. At that point, I straighten my posture, put a little more bounce in my step, and speed up - - to just over a snail's pace. Now we're cruisin'.

And this hobby is fancy these days, too...the invention of traveling music! In high school, I never liked running with my 3 lb walkman tapedeck strapped to my umbros (how's that for 90's lingo?). Now I strap that tiny mp3 player to my arm and I've got some instant motivation. Currently it's Dave Matthews Band Live at Red Rocks. Crazy motivation. I kind of feel like I'm on Grey's Anatomy or some movie with this background music to my life.

Running is one of the few times I'm able to get inside my head and make a little sense of things. I can look at it almost from a neutral point of view - God's point of view. He shows me the areas that need a little cleaning (yeah, 'quick tempered' isn't one of the fruits of the spirit...I checked), and I can see the areas that are beginning to grow. By the end of the run I feel like a million bucks. Not only have I gotten my heart rate up and burned some calories, but I've done a little soul searching as well. Next week, I may be on hobby #3, but for now, my middle name is Prefontaine.