I like being outside. This is probably rooted in the amount of time I spent outside as a kid. Whether it be trying to set the backyard on fire or heading down the street to the playground of the nearby elemnentary school, my youth saw a lot of time in the outdoors. A great way to be outside for extended periods is to walk. My life has had various periods of time spent walking. When the family car broke down, we spent a lot of time walking to and from various places in the course of daily life. The store, church, the library. When I went to college, I walked to and from school every day since I didn't have a car. My first job, I spent a lot of time wandering downtown. This was only increased when the TV station gave all the employees and encouraged everybody to average 10,000 steps per day for some amount of time. There was even a counter on the sidebar of this blog for a while. This began my era of very long walks; 3-6 miles was pretty common. And when I moved to California... I kind of fell off that.

Now, when I was out and about, I still didn't mind putting in miles walking where other transportation would be annoying. Namely, doing anything up in San Francisco. Driving up there is not my favorite thing, so I'd opt for taking the train and walking wherever I needed to go. But, the every day long walks disappeared until I joined SurveyMonkey and my lunches were no longer spent with the usual lunch crew. I started walking around the block, then started walking around the mall, and just kept extending the range. As this continued, I needed footware that was actually suitable for walking. Wanting to make sure I got something that would best support my feet for long walks, I did some research and it turned out the best shoe for walking was a runnig shoe.

Took two whole paragraphs to get to the title's topic.

Armed with a pair of running shoes and a newly found zeal for working out thanks to encouragement from friends and coworkers (and also meaningful weight loss), one day I decided "hey... maybe I should try running?". By this point, I was living next to downtown San Mateo and was walking three to four miles every evening, on top of whatever I would do at lunch which itself had evolved beyond just walking. So, trying running was just another type of exercise to keep things mixed up. Also, devbus had been running for a while, so there as an added social aspect. All those sentences to say, one day instead of my walk, I attempted a run instead.

It sucked.

But, it was a start. I don't recall running being what I considered my "primary" form of exercise, that was probably more in the HIIT/weights area. But, looking back, I was definitely trying hard to get better at it. My early attempts were in the fall of 2018, and by 2019 I had signed up for and completed my first 10k, a lovely run through Bend which I had encouraged devbus to join for. The regular running was kept up and improvements were made, more races were run, but I don't think I actively enjoyed the sport yet. At least, not consciously.

That mentality held for a while, up until I signed up for the Star Wars half marathon in Disney World with devbus. I heralded that this race would be the end of my running career... that race was scheduled for April 2020. Don't have to tell you what happened there, but without anything to train towards, I fell off the running bandwagon for a while. During the WFH phase of the pandemic, I picked the long walks at lunch back up, only occasionally running.

Not really sure when it happened, but somewhere in there I realized that I was actually getting enjoyment from runs. I didn't balk at putting on the shoes as much, didn't curse every second of active intervals. It was enjoyable being outside, listening to a podcast, and having that good feeling of accomplishment I had when the run was done.

While there were no active races being held, I did a number of virtual ones just to dangle a little carrot in front of my face. That continued all the way to the Disney Princess virtual half marathon that I ran in February this year. This time, however, I never planned on stopping. I've continued to run (or maybe jog; my times aren't anything spectacular) and will continue to run. Not only for the in-person Disneyland half marathon devbus and I managed to snag spots for next January, but because it feels good.

And I need every drop of dopamine I can get.