Team Gabriel: Running?

So, those of you who know me well may remember my strong aversion to running. We are talking hating, despising and generally disliking all things having to do with running for the first 29 years and 2.5 months of my life.

However - something changed during that 3rd month of my 29th year. One weekend, I decided to take a run - lo and behold, I loved it. And we are talking falling hard for it. Sidebar: should give a shout out here to my sister Cara, who always told me one day it would just click for me. I guess what they say is true - wisdom does come with age ;-).

By the way, you should totally check out Cara's running page. She's the author at Running In Sanity at www.runninginsanity.com.

Running makes me feel good. My head is more clear, my attitude is better and I get a great workout, plus some quiet time and some personal time just to myself. And as an added benefit, I can already see the changes its making in my body - which is freaking awesome!!

So, of course, Cara talked me into running a race with her - is anyone shocked? I was not. My little sister was not. Our friend Kelly was not. Anyone that knows Cara knows that she's quite persuasive when it comes to getting something she wants - and I have to say, nothing I've done with her has ever turned out badly! So, next week, we are flying down to Disney World for the Tower of Terror 10 miler!!! I am SO excited. Not only for the race, but to get to spend a long weekend with my sister which is something I haven't done in so long. Literally, I can't remember the last time we spent time together, just the two of us. It was certainly before we both had our kiddos.

Now, I'm training for this race. I'm running miles and miles each week - last week I ran 15 miles - that just sounds insane to me! To go from never running (and never wanting to run, ever) to running over 10 miles a week is just amazing to me. And I love it.

As part of my training, Richard and I did the Rock'n Roll Half Marathon in Virginia Beach the weekend of Labor Day - actually, the race was on his birthday. We had so much fun. The energy and running with all those people - it was awesome. Richard actually ended up running the whole half and he did a fantastic job.

So, I'd advise you - if you've hated running all your life like I did, just keep giving it a shot every now and then. You never know - it might just click for you too!