Why I’ve Started “Running”

#TransparentTuesdays

So… I’ve recently started running.

Ok, ok. If I’m being totally honest, calling what I’ve been doing “running” would be a bit of an exaggeration.

What I’ve been doing is just dipping a teeny tiny toe into the very shallow waters of running, by occasionally including a small handful of running intervals during my walks outside. 

It started a few months ago, when an incredibly stressful situation with a family member left me feeling a weird (for me) combination of agitation, anxiety, and frustration. 

Thinking I would just go for a walk to calm down, I put on my lightest running shoes and headed outside. But as I walked, I kept finding myself picking up the speed, wanting to go faster. I was responding to an intuitive sense that something still needed to be cast out of me or burned up, and the walk just wasn’t doing the trick. So I figured… ok, let me try putting on some music, setting a little interval timer, and doing a few minutes of jogging on and off.

Woof. 

I only did about four total minutes of “running” that day, but let me tell you, it did the trick. 

Sure, I turned the color of a tomato and my legs were sore for days, but pushing myself like that got the offending energy out. And that was the point.

If you’ve been following me since my personal training days, you know that I love lifting weights but I hate cardio, so this was actually a pretty big deal for me. 

The thing is, I have very few truly reliable, effective, and repeatable tools to improve my mood and mental health, and moving my body has always been one of them. But generally speaking, I really dislike the feeling of getting my heart rate up, so I tend to avoid any and all activities that do so. (Especially running, thanks to the traumatizing “mile run” situation that happened every year in gym class.)

What I love about moving my body is feeling powerful, strong, empowered, and free— all things I feel when I’m lifting heavy weights, dancing, jumping, and trying new skills!

But “steady state cardio,” where you get your heart rate up a bit and then keep it up in more or less the same range for the rest of the activity, tends to make me feel small, weak, and claustrophobic. 

Part of me thinks it’s because I had asthma as a kid, and I’ve had pneumonia and bronchitis a million times, so maybe my lungs are a little damaged or something… but either way, the end result is that I just don’t like it. 

That said, I obviously recognize that cardio is “good for you,” so I’ve worked through this a million ways over the years, both with therapists and at the gym, and I’ve even gone through long phases of intentional training to improve my cardiovascular system. 

The training would “work,” technically speaking, but progress always seemed much slower and more painful for me than it was for other people, and being in better cardiovascular shape never made me enjoy the experience any more.

So for the sake of sustainability and joy, I’ve spent most of my adult life doing activities that feel good and fun and empowering, and I’ve left the running (and biking and hiking) to others. 

But a while back I realized that there seemed to be a stronger connection between workouts that got my heart rate up a bit, and the improved mood and mental health I was seeking… especially when my stress manifests as that agitated restlessness I described before. 

Which actually makes a lot of sense, doesn’t it? 

Sometimes our bodies identify a threat, and determine that we need to flee (or fight)—so they give us the literal energy we need to do so! 

But when the source of that stress isn’t something we can literally flee from, we still need to use up and metabolize that “run away” energy out of us somehow!

So what could be more appropriate than taking all that “run away!” energy my body is giving me, and going for a literal run? It just makes good sense, and the immediate benefit was pretty obvious when I got home and noticed that I could think clearly and be present again. 

Do I have any plans to keep this up, become a runner, or train for something, like a race?

Uhh… no, probably not. That’s not really my vibe.

But for as long as I need an outlet for this energy, I will continue giving myself one. 

And since I can’t very well expect my joints to be happy about occasional bursts of running out of nowhere, I will continue building my capacity to call upon this tool safely whenever I need it. 

Because sometimes we train for fun, and sometimes we train to be safe and stable— physically, mentally, and emotionally.

Big hug,

Jessi