So I'm a runner now...barf.

I did something crazy this morning. I got up over an hour earlier than I needed to, clothed myself in the raiment of a runner, armed myself with my iphone and mace (yes I'm serious, you never know), did some stretches, complained to myself very loudly in my head and tried to get myself to stop (actually that's the only NOT crazy thing I did) and went for a run. And it was raining, ice cold grody rain, too.

"Why Sheridan?!" you cry, "why would you do such a terrible awful thing?"

Because on a whim I decided I'm gonna run a 5k to support autism awareness that's happening on April 14th.

Let's back up for a moment, shall we? I haven't run any amount of long distance, or even much of a short distance for that matter, in so long I honestly can't remember when. I hate running. I mean really hate it. The only exercising I do regularly is going for walks. I've lost a good measurable chunk of weight twice in my life, and I know for a fact because of those experiences, that you can healthily (is that a word? haha) lose weight without heavy duty working out, running, or cutting out delicious things from your diet. Just eat in moderation and you'll be fine. In 7th grade, I was on the cross country team. I was 5'2" and 150+ pounds, I was slow, and everyone hated me cuz I was the reason we all lost by a huge number of points. In 8th grade, I tried field hockey and soccer. More traumatic experiences, and even more running than cross country, what the heck. In 9th grade I hated sports and got even fatter, weighing in at around 160. In 10th grade I tried tennis. I was good, I liked it, no one made fun of me, I got skinnier and I didn't have to run much. And that's why me and tennis were meant to be. Anyhow, point being, I hate running and I've never had need for it.

Now for the weird part, several times in my life, I've had dreams where I'm running and I feel completely euphoric and it's the greatest thing in the world. Isn't that an actual thing, "the runner's high" or something like that? Well, I have dreams about it. And I've never experienced it in real life, so, that's weird haha. I had one recently. What kind of a true running-hater has dreams about a euphoric state of running and feeling free and being just too gosh darn happy about it? THEN starting a month or so ago I've had random thoughts of "hey, maybe I should start running". Out of the blue. Since that time I've had at least 5 friends, all unrelated stories and they don't know each other, who have decided to train for 5ks, half-marathons, toughmudders etc and be all gross and run. ew.

So all of that went down and I still had no desire to do it myself. Yesterday at work I got my info paper about signing up for Logan's run and/or walk for autism, and in a splitsecond, it was all over for me. I thought to myself, "I'm gonna run this" and there was no turning back. How disgusting am I? So that's the story of how I've kinda had it coming for the past couple months, and came up with this crazy whim. And I'm actually following through...so far. It's only been a day.

I decided to start out really slow and really easy, cuz like I said, it's been ages since I ran more than 10 feet. This morning I ran a half mile in 7 minutes. I got back home and wasn't sweaty and could still hold a full conversation without hyperventilating or passing out. And I was surprised with myself. So I'm (hopefully) gonna keep running every morning for the next month and a half, and my goal is to be able to run a mile in 6-7 minutes, and do the 5k in under 24. That's a lot of work. But when I set my mind to something, I find a way to do it. I like a challenge. I also like to think "HA look at me now!"

And then I can check it off my bucket list and never run EVER again. Or, maybe I'll do so well I'll win one of the cash prizes and I'll think to myself "hey, I'm poor...I should get really good at this and run 5ks everywhere!" Or not haha.

The cool thing is I made a goal a few weeks ago to get up earlier so I can chill and have some down time. My morning schedule is horrific. I set at least 5 alarms, sometimes closer to 10, the last one being at thee last possible second I have to get up before I won't have enough time and I'll be late. And I never ever peel myself out of bed until that last one goes off, but most of the time I lay around for another 2 minutes after that. Try as I might, it is pretty much physically and mentally impossible for me to get up any second earlier than that, no matter how early I went to bed the nite before. And then I usually run around like a crazy person and I can never sit down and have a nice breakfast, or take more than 30 seconds to put make up on, and I speed to work and I'm almost always late. This whole getting up uber early to run thing will actually help with that. I'm pretty sure what got me out of bed this morning was the fact that I wanted to do it early enough that it wasn't too light yet and the least amount of people would see me, HAHA.

Anyway, there's a reason for all things I guess.

Tomorrow, I'm getting up early and going for a run. And then, to reward myself, I'm driving to my favorite donut place in Lebanon and getting some donuts. =)

P.S. You all can follow me on bloglovin now if you have an account (which is really easy to create) since apparently google/blogger is getting rid of GFC. So here's the link to head on over there and follow if you wish: Follow my blog with Bloglovin