How I Went From Zero to 1.5 Miles Per Run in 7 Days

To be completely real with you, I’m pretty surprised about this. I know this isn’t far by many people’s standards, but I’m not a runner. I went from not running at all and not even walking (or doing anything for that matter) one day, to deciding I was going to start running the next. Now, I run 1.5 miles 5 mornings out of 7 and sometimes during the day, I think “I can’t wait to run tomorrow morning.”

WHAT?!?! 

The last time I tried to start running (again), I was doing one of the programs where you alternate walking and running and slowly build up the running segment over time. I think I had done it about 3 times and then I declared my victory to some of my closest, most sympathetic, but also most bad-ass friends. I mean the friends that regularly run marathons, the ones who do triathlons, and the ones who have run Ragnar. 

I am laughing right now at how absurd that is, mostly because….   promptly after declaring my victory, I quit. I didn’t run anymore. Like, not 5 strides. 

We’ve all been there, right? 

So the big question is HOW did I go from nothing to 1.5 miles within about a week? 

But is that really the big question? I have to tell you that I will, in fact, answer that question. But more interesting to me, and I’m hoping to you, right now is WHY. 

A couple of months ago, Casey and I decided that our family needed to sit down and talk about our values (I talk about that here). Our home had started feeling…   off. And I’m energetically very sensitive (so is my whole family) – so we were all pretty out of sorts.  In that conversation we talked about how we wanted our home to feel, what qualities we wanted within it, and how to demonstrate those qualities. Again, I wrote a whole post on this here if it’s of interest…  I think this is a conversation every family should have.

This got me thinking about my teams at work. I manage and oversee three SAFe Agile teams and am always looking for ways to make our improvement goals real. So after the exercise with my family, I was thinking in terms of values and I decided that our goal for the rest of the year was to increase our Reliability and Consistency. If you know anything about Agile development, these qualities are what, I believe, you look to balance with being flexible with regard to changing priorities and evolving requirements. If you don’t, that’s totally ok – you can just take my word for it!

After talking with my teams about this, I had another epiphany. 

When it came to my own life, my own personal priorities and projects, I was not Reliable. 

When I thought about that even more, I began to wonder (and then know that) if I wasn’t showing up for myself, being reliable to my own needs and goals, I was (likely) not showing up for others.  OUCH!!!

I wondered about the ways I wasn’t reliable to myself. One of the top ways I came up with was taking care of myself physically. Other ways include not finishing personal projects that I start, and / or not allocating enough time for projects that I deeply want to complete. 

I decided something needed to change, and so I wrote in my journal a list of commitments to myself. 

One of them reads, “Keep promises to myself ALWAYS (this builds trust in myself)”

I started reading my list of commitments to myself every morning and every night. 

One of my other commitments is “Exercise 5 X per week”. And I read that commitment every single morning and night. It was still relevant, I still wanted it. But I wasn’t doing it. 

Until I was. 

One Monday morning, I realized that I could make time in the morning to go for a walk / run. I knew that I would start with a reasonable goal and get really comfortable with it before I went for more. 

My approach (ie, Steps to get yourself running):

1. Warm up //  I decided to walk about a quarter of a mile (maybe a little less) to warm up. 
2. Trigger to Run // Then, as soon as I turned onto the trail, I would start running. This was key because there was a trigger for me as to exactly when I’d start running.  
3. Running Approach // I decided I would just run in one segment, not break it up. I always got to a point where I just didn’t want to make myself run another segment with other common approaches (which are great if they work for you, but never really worked for me). I also decided I would run at a very slow pace and increase speed only if I felt able. 
4. Long Term Goal // I decided I would be very happy if I could work up to running 1 mile without stopping. I didn’t think I would run that at first and set no goals for exactly when I’d achieve that by. 
5. Initial Goal // I set a tentative “stopping” location, but left room for me to assess how my body was feeling and if I could go further comfortably, I decided I would. (Note on this later.)
6. Planned Room for Growth // I planned my route to be approximately 2.5 miles in total so that I could walk the rest to cool down and get more exercise and so that as I kept running, I could see if I could go further and further. 
7. Smart Route Plan // I planned my route so that I didn’t have to immediately run up any big hills. I live in Colorado and all of my routes have hills. I purposely planned my route for success.  
8. Out of My Head //  I got out of my head. Instead of analyzing the tension in my shoulders, or how my legs were feeling.  Or let’s be honest…   how much I was sucking wind on the small uphills. I decided to look around. The more I got out of my head, the more I was relaxed and I settled into a comfortable, slow, and maintainable stride and pace.
9. Mindful // The more I created a gentle awareness of what was happening within my breath and the tension in my body, the more I could relax that and release it. I know I just said out of my head and now I’m saying mindful. What’s up with that? 

To dive into that last point a little further, it’s not an issue when we have thoughts or we recognize something, the issue is what we choose to do with it after the awareness comes. I find that if I cling to the tension (or the thoughts about the tension) I just recognized, it stays and gets much worse. If I say to myself, ‘there’s tension’ and then let that thought go, I can release the thought and the tension as well.

It’s the lack of clinging that allows me to remain Out of My Head and Mindful simultaneously.

So my first run result was that I ran further than my initial goal. My body felt really good!  It felt strong and resilient. So I kept going. I stopped when my body said “stop” and walked the rest of the way around my 2.5 mile loop. 

If you are still learning to listen to the queues of your body,  you may want to be firm with your stopping point. I have found that one of the worst things to do is to push too hard. That leaves us feeling drained and hurting instead of strong and pumped! If your stopping point is when you’re drained and hurting when you’re just starting out, it won’t leave you very motivated to go again. You may leave that one run with a negative feeling association, which will be there the next day when you want to run again. If you stop before you get to that point, you’ll still feel good (positive association) and will have more drive to go again. 

Over the course of two weeks, I worked up to 1.5 miles and was faced with needing to run up a monster of a hill. I am still currently applying this same approach to running up the hill. At this point, I am thrilled and amazed at what my body is capable of. Even so, I’m more amazed at what my MIND is capable of doing! I am slowly reprogramming my mind to enjoy an activity that I previously tried but failed (miserably) to enjoy. 

I hope you’ve found these tips helpful and if you decide to start running using any of these tips, I’d love to hear how it goes!

If you’re interested in hearing about some of my favorite gear for running, I’ve written about them here!