Jogging regularly for six months!

Started from my 52nd birthday, I have been jogging regularly.  I now can jog at 5.6mph at ease. It is nothing compared with a Marathon runner.

However, sport is my shortcoming always. As a student, I had always been on the top 5 from 1st grade up to grade 11 among 400 students also. Yet, I was listed close to the bottom in terms of athletic performances. Perhaps I am not genetically disposed to perform above average on that respect, as people often called me as “bean sprout”, because I was tall and slender compared with peers.

Since  my 50th birthday, I noticed that my middle part started to grow, and my right toe began to develop a bunion which confirms that I am not in particular built to run. However, the idea of becoming an out-of-shaped middle-aged woman propels me to take actions, so I started to run on a treadmill in my community gym last December in snowy Colorado. Besides, I am new to the area, I know no one else other than colleagues. I started out at 4mph and ran for 38 mins, and often wrapped up with a very slow jogging at 3.5mph walking speed. 

I am not into snow sports. During winter, I continued to run 4-5 times a week. In the small gym, there are two parallel treadmills. Sometimes, I got another runner running at 9.2mph in parallel. This made me feel a bit inferior. Soon this sense of inferiority faded because my goal is to maintain my health and body shape and I am not overweight by any standard.

Four months into running, I have lengthened my running time to one hour, but maximum speed remained at 4.2mph. Meanwhile, my pants start to feel loose and I saw my waste just below rib cage slimmed by a few inches. That’s an invigorating feedback. Besides, when running, I listened to the sound made by my feet hitting the treadmill. It is monotonous, but also soothing. My over-active mind is much quieter. At least 30 minutes after running, my body feels so warm, the sense of loneliness and  hollowness along with the disappointment at the new job environment seems a bit vague and rescinding too. Good!

Perhaps I can venture a bit to run faster for just a minute in each five-minute cycle programmed by the treadmill, I thought  to myself. That will certainly make running a bit more fun. So did I go, running at 5.9 mph for a minute. Now it certainly feels more like running because it requires my thighs to be active too and my stride wider. Remarkably, despite I only inserted one or two such fast minutes in my one-hour jogging, after returning to my usual 4 or 4.2mph speed, the normal speed feels like slow motion!

After once or twice such run, I now can run at 5.5mph at ease.  This surprises myself.   It seems that our body has a mind of its own that is independent of our conscious control. As a matter of fact, most of our physiology cannot be controlled only influenced by our mind.   That is for the sake of saving our bodies from ourselves.  Otherwise, if our physiology abide by our mind all the time, we could have willed ourselves to death for an infinite number of times. 

Say, if someone murmured to himself/herself,  why I am so fat although I eat little, I wish I could simply vanish from the world. Puff! Your body listened, and withered immediately.  I am glad that our thoughts cannot dictate our body, but only affect it marginally.

Wait, not only our body, our mind runs its own course too in some degree.  The strength training machines with all kinds of weights, pulley wheels, fixtures in the small gym have been intimating, I couldn’t not figure it out how they work together.  In the fourth month of my regular gym-going, they look so familiar that they no longer appear intimating but inviting. I started to try them one by one. Before I knew, I can use them in the way I wanted without any help. 

During the six months, I shedded about six pounds, one pound a month on average. This does not seem impressive, but I am not overweighted by any means in the beginning.  I will continue to run and occasionally vary it with yoga and qigong and cycling.

The most important lesson I learned is that do not let your own thoughts in the way when you want to achieve in whatever aspect of your life.