Gonna walk before they make me run

I tried something new and I just do this now

Content warning: This week’s newsletter discusses fitness (running, not very well, but regularly) and weight (deciding not to consider weight loss while considering exercise.) Feel free to skip it if you’re not up for that!

I was enjoying a nice sunny Sunday afternoon with some friends last September, sitting in Holly and Jeffrey’s back yard, eating, drinking, and talking shit, when Miranda said she had been considering doing the Couch to 5K program.

I don’t know if you’re as familiar with Couch to 5K as I am, but if you’re someone who loves to start a project and hates to finish it, Couch to 5K is pure catnip. It’s a running program that you’re supposed to be able to do even if you’re leading a couch-based sedentary lifestyle, which I usually am and absolutely was last September. You run and walk three times a week, starting with eight sets of one minute of running followed by 90 seconds of walking. The amount of running increases while the time spent walking decreases until on week nine you are suddenly capable of running for a half hour straight. 

My first impulse was to tune all the way out to what Miranda was saying — the last time I’d successfully completed the program was over 12 years before and I’d gone right back to the couch after running the 5K. Running didn’t just seem like it was for me — I am LAZY and NATURALLY SWEATY and had no interest. I felt settled into my body and filled with inertia and thought that was just fine.

I’d started Couch to 5K several times since that one-time successful completion over a decade ago and I always quit after the first week. Who has the time?! Who has the energy?! The world is ending anyway, right?!

But a minute after Miranda floated the possibility of doing Couch to 5K, I replied without thinking that I would do it too. “I’ve done it before. It’s fine. It works. It sucks but it works.” I didn’t think I’d actually follow through. I didn’t think I’d stick with it past that first week. I didn’t really think I could do it with an twelve extra years on my body and my brain, not to mention every goddamned thing that’s happened over the last several years weighing me down and making me even more tired.

My partner Dave agreed to do it too, just as we did in 2009, and Holly, Jeffrey, and Bob also said they’d get off the couch. Both Holly and Bob ended up stopping the program because their knees didn’t let them continue, but the rest of us struggled on until the end. Dave and I did the Hot Chocolate Run the day after my 47th birthday. Nine months later, we’re all still running. 

When I started the program, I decided for the first time in my life that I was not going to exercise for the purpose of trying to lose weight. As someone who does not naturally love exercise, did not have any idea what people were talking about when they mentioned “endorphins” or “runner’s high” or other such mystical claims, and is overall just quite lazy in general and would rather spend my free time napping or staring into space or playing the 4,000th level on Two Dots, it’s always been a “shit, I want to lose ten pounds; guess I’ll EXERCISE?!” situation when I actually start moving. I have done Weight Watchers and Noom in the past but they both left me hungry all the time and thinking about food constantly and just…fuck that.

I’ve ranged between slightly overweight to being on the verge of “obese,” according to The Numbers That Be, for twenty years but my doctor has never been worried about it and I really don’t worry about it either, most of the time. I don’t own a scale and get weighed once a year at the doctor’s office and it all registers in my brain as fairly neutral to slightly irritating. Still, the idea of exercising just for the sake of exercising and not considering how it might change my body “for the better” had never occurred to me. I know! Even when I “don’t really worry about it” I guess at the end of the day I was worrying about it! I hate that for me! But I’m older and sadder and give fewer fucks than I have in the past and just decided to do this damn program with zero expectations beyond showing up and trying. 

When I had my annual physical last month, it turned out I hadn’t lost any weight at all over the last year. And despite everything, I was kind of sad for a second! But I got over it. When I got my blood test results back, it turned out that my bad cholesterol, which was a little high last year, was back down to normal levels and my good cholesterol levels had gone up! Quantitative proof that I had “improved” in some way, followed by a  “good job, keep up the good work!” from my doctor. It’s not glamorous but I’ll take it.

I talked to Miranda (who is 46) last night over some beers and to Jeffrey (who is 49) this afternoon during the time that we usually go running on Fridays. (I moved into a new apartment this week and he’s had a particularly grueling week at work and so we just didn’t run this week. Back to it next week!) We talked about our nearly ten months as runners.

Miranda: I run three times a week first thing in the morning before work. I set my alarm for 5:45 a.m., lay out my running clothes and earbuds and pick out the music I’m going to run to before bed and just get up and go before I have time to talk myself out of it. I don’t love getting up that early and I’m not militant about it. If it’s too hot? I don’t run. If my back hurts? I don’t run. I usually run. I do about 25 minutes twice and then 30 minutes on the last day and I try to do Monday, Wednesday, and Friday with room for moving things around as needed.

Karen: I remember when we started this you said you wanted to lose a few pounds. Have you lost any weight? I have not. 

Miranda: I have lost five pounds. Honestly, if I hadn’t lost five pounds, it would be hard for me to continue because I honestly haven’t noticed any other changes! I also wanted to sleep better, which was my real reason for wanting to start, and I don’t! 

Karen: Oh, same. [I think this is just part of being middle aged -- sleep is bad now and there’s just nothing to be done. So many people I know who are my age just never sleep well. What the HELL?!??!?!?! Why isn’t this shared with us sooner? It doesn’t matter, I would have said “sucks to be old, I guess, lol!”] I recently learned that my bad cholesterol levels have gone down, so that’s been the “ok, something positive has happened, I guess I’ll carry on” moment for me.

Miranda: I haven’t had blood work in a while so the five pounds is the only metric I can point to and say “it’s doing something. I’M doing something.” It’s not really about the weight. I guess on some subconscious level my brain knows that running is good for it, but it really only shows up in no longer whining about having to run. I did take a week off recently and the first two days without running were great, but by the third day I missed it.

Karen: Yeah, it’s hard to do all this work and see and feel few tangible results, which I think would not be the case if we were younger. When I did Couch to 5K in my early 30’s, it helped everything! 

Miranda: I can see that. I think at this point we’re just careening off the cliff at a slightly less drastic angle. It’s not nothing! 

Karen: I love that! 

Jeffrey and I run together about three times a week.

Karen: What was your relationship with running and fitness before we all started Couch to 5K?

Jeffrey: In the mid-’90s I used to run around Earlywine Park in Oklahoma City after work a few times a week. It was probably a mile and a half loop. Then I’d have a cigarette when I was done and make my way to Quicker Liquor! When I moved to Northampton in 2005, I started running on bike trails, which we didn’t have in Oklahoma. I stopped at some point, probably because I was riding my bike a lot more, and I honestly thought I was done running. I assumed my legs and knees were bad. I had been weightlifting a little pre-pandemic but of course I stopped going to the gym. I bought a rowing machine and have used it maybe three times.

Karen: How was it starting up again with Couch to 5K?

Jeffrey: I was surprised that it was relatively easy to ease into it, which is the point of the program, but still. Everything still worked! I thought it didn’t! It was also fun to sort of gameify it and think of it as “leveling up” and proving to myself that I could still do this. It also helped to do it as a group — I wanted to impress my friends and not be the one to quit!

Karen: Yeah, I think I would have quit somewhere in the middle if we hadn’t all been encouraging each other and cheering each other on. It’s such a slow and steady process and I am not good at slow and steady. I tend to do nothing for a long time and then suddenly get a burst of energy or a sudden rush of panic and just bang things out and then collapse. I’m actually doing that right now with this week’s issue of Two Bossy Dames! 

Jeffrey: Yeah, that’s very relatable.

Karen: Have you seen any dramatic changes? Miranda and I were saying the changes are there but they’re subtle and that would not have been the case when we were younger.

Jeffrey: Like you, I have not lost any weight, but I feel more agile and quick and am more apt to run in my day to day life, say across a parking lot or while walking the dogs. I don’t have striking mental or emotional changes, but I think I am overall calmer. I’m prone to panic attacks and I haven’t had one in a long time! I think I have better posture and less back pain in general, too.

Karen: Amazing! I know we recently started trying to go from 5K to 10K but it honestly seems like more trouble than it’s worth. A few months ago I told Dave that I just wanted to get to the point where I could run for half an hour without wanting to die and I can do that now! Maybe that’s enough! 

Jeffrey: Yeah! I’m not sure people who are pushing 50 are supposed to learn how to run for an hour?! At least maybe we’re not. It’s all just general maintenance to me at this point. The fact that I can actually run for 30 full minutes is enough.

Karen: It’s enough!