Two days before I left Evanston for the summer, I stood in a hotel room with my mom preparing to confess that the journalism conference I had Saturday morning, the day we were flying home, was made up.
She looked pretty surprised, and then totally gobsmacked, when I told her that, really, I was running a half marathon that morning.
“Okay! Why didn’t you tell us?”
For most of my life, I have not felt like I could physically run, let alone enjoy doing it. I’ve never been an athlete — the only school team I was ever on by merit was debate.
Then, in the fall, I ran (if you can even call it that) a 5k in about 50 minutes. I spent the rest of Fall Quarter thinking about how poorly I ran that race.
I barely completed a mile before I was totally winded, and I was the last to finish among my friends by several minutes. It was almost embarrassing. Why was I so out of shape?
I did a decent amount of running on the treadmill in January and February. But, as avid Communal Shower Thoughts readers know, I am not a big fan of running inside.
When the weather got nicer, I started running outside, and I realized running outside was kind of awesome — and it all progressed from there.
On March 22 of this year, one of my friends texted me asking when I started running (he saw my posts on Strava, a trendy fitness social media app geared towards runners). I told him I was a new runner and that my goal was to run 10 consecutive miles by the end of Spring Quarter.
“Why not make it a half?” he wrote back.
When he put it that way, it sounded so simple, even if I could still barely run a 5k without being absolutely winded. But, I thought about it and a week later I was registered for my first half marathon.
For over a month I trained without telling anyone, even my friend, that I had registered, which was very difficult for me. You can imagine how much restraint it took me to not write a “Training for my first half marathon” installment in the Spring.
But, I also know myself and know that I have a tendency to get really excited about things for a short amount of time and not follow through with them, so I didn’t want to declare myself a runner just yet.
It wasn’t until I ran 11 miles on June 1 (Strava post: “Guys. I so got this. 13 days until 13 miles)
By the time I realized I would follow through with this whole half-marathon thing, I was pretty open about it with my friends at school. But, I thought it would still be kind of funny not to tell my family. They, out of anyone, know how out of habit running is for me — and I knew the shock value would be priceless.
I still struggle with labelling myself a runner — I mean, I used to wear Uggs to PE the day we had to run the mile — but a little over two weeks post half marathon and a few crazy-hot summer runs later, I’m thinking it’s not a huge stretch.
One slight downside to the whole experience was that, without knowing any marathon etiquette, I signed up for a pretty lackluster race that had me dodging goose poop left and right. But, that’s all well and good because now I’ll just have to run another race.
Maybe a full 26.2?
Sylvie Slotkin is a rising Medill junior. She can be contacted at [email protected]. If you would like to respond publicly to this op-ed, send a Letter to the Editor to [email protected]. The views expressed in this piece do not necessarily reflect the views of all staff members of The Daily Northwestern.
