30 Life Lessons - The 5k
- Douglas McCall
- Oct 12, 2024
- 3 min read
I have had an on-again, off-again relationship with physical activity. I know the value of sustained physical activity, both physically and mentally, and I want to be more physically active, but there is a disconnect in execution.
If I think about the time when it was most effective, it would have to have been somewhere in the early 2010s. We had moved (again) to a townhouse in Camillus. I was teaching high school then, so I didn’t have much free time (not that I ever did in those days). However, I started walking. I would carve out one hour for walking. Initially, I would walk for 20 minutes, 10 minutes away from home and 10 minutes to return. This worked well for a while. Eventually, 10 and 10 became 15 and 15, 20 and 20, and 30 and 30. I was walking approximately the miles each day! I felt great (although I was still eating terrible food, which wasn’t the best choice).
As I got comfortable with the one-hour, I wanted more of a challenge. But I wasn’t willing to devote any more than one hour. In my mind, the logical solution was to increase the pace. I challenged myself to see how far I could get in that hour. Eventually, I reached a point where I was a little over 3 miles that same hour. I was at a 5k distance.
The weather was beginning to turn in my area, and that morning, walking/jogging was getting brisker and brisker. Now that I ran more consistently, I needed another goal. Perhaps it was the fact that I was running just about 3.2 miles in the hour, but I decided a reasonable goal was to run a 5k, but not just any 5k, one that ran on Thanksgiving Day. In central NY, Thanksgiving Day can be pretty dicey regarding the weather. Snow is not uncommon. It did not matter. I threw caution to the wind and made that my plan.
By early November, I was jogging every day, and my 3.2 miles expanded to accomplishing somewhere between 4 and 5 miles in that same hour. I had even invested in decent running shoes. I bought activewear that would allow me to survive the elements but not sweat to death as my core temperature increased. The day came. I arrived at the race location (not far from my childhood home) and waited at the starting line. The starter pistol sounded, and I was off. Everything worked exactly as it had every other day before. I followed the course and even improved my pace slightly. It did not snow that morning, but it had, and the temperature was a balmy 26 degrees! I started off freezing, sweating by the end of mile one. I made it through the course in just over 38 minutes (and was not last in my age division; I was in the middle). I had achieved my goal!
I continued running for several months and even entered a Mud Run in the spring (a 5k combined with a military-style obstacle course. It was not as enjoyable for me, but I completed it. I ran that because some of my Masonic Brothers were running it, and I figured, “Why not?”
After the mud run, my attention toward daily running became every other day. Over time, it became a few times a week and fell off entirely. Looking back, I cannot isolate why it stopped, but it did. Over the next ten years, I would remember running a 5k but never find the drive to recreate the event. As I sit here typing about that point, I wonder what stops me from doing it now. Indeed, I have not aged out of physical activity. I can still walk 18 holes and play a round of golf. It takes me three hours, but I can still do it.
If I could improve my physical activity once, surely I can do it again. All of the pieces of the recipe are still there. I have to decide it is something I want to do and work towards it. That is the beautiful thing about successes in your past. You don’t have to wonder if you can do them because you have already done them. The proof is already there in your past.
What are the successes in your past that you can point to as say, “If I did that then, surely I can do something similar now!” How can you harness those moments to propel you into the future you want for yourself?
Be well!
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