When I was a little girl I knew I wanted to be either a ballerina, teacher or waitress when I grew up. Didn’t everyone have aspiring dreams to be a waitress?

The other thing I really wanted to be was a runner.

My dad was a runner.  Not some willy nilly jogger who ran around the block every other week.  No, my dad was the real deal.  In his heyday he was running 6 days a week for a total of about 55 miles. I’m pretty sure I haven’t even walked 55 miles in my lifetime.

He ran many races and even did the Twin Cities marathon.  I loved watching him get ready, Shoo Goo his shoes each night, ice his Achilles heel each morning, not to mention the mountain of race t-shirts I coveted.

My father ran well into his 60′s when at his final race, looking a little too worse for wear my mother said, “STOP! You’re done!”  He may have been done doing races but he continued his morning jogs until just a few years ago. Now, at 80 years young, he still walks many times a week.

This is my SUPER long way to say, I WANNA RUN!!!

I’ve been working out steadily for a year now. (Whoa. Just writing that is crazy.  I’ve never stuck with exercise for this long, EVER!)  First it was the walking, with a dabble in running.  But honestly that was just when I was going downhill.  With arms flailing while trying not to fall on my face.

Last July I bought the “Couch to 5K” app and tried it.

Once.

Did you ever play that drinking game in college called, “Century Club”?  Well I hear (because of course I NEVER played it) it was a wholesome game of drinking a shot of beer for a minute for 100 minutes. Again I never played it, but if I did I would say that in the beginning it’s super easy.  “One shot of beer? That’s nothing.”  However, as the minutes go on you feel as though having Glenn Beck as a roommate would be a better fate than this.

C25K is like that.  The first time when the voice said “run” and I ran for those first 60 seconds I was all, “This isn’t bad. No problem.”  However, by the 4th time I heard “run” I wanted to cry and hurt the voice.  When he said “You’re half way done.” in his insipid monotone way I said, “Nope buddy. I’m done!” and walked the rest of the way.

I hung up the app until last week.

It was a rare beautiful spring day and I was just going to take a walk.  Until I remember the tucked away app.  I turned it on and when I heard “run” I ran.  And guess what?  It wasn’t painful.  It was, dare I say, FUN!  When my friend said, “You’re half way done” I said “Oh, really? Huh.”

So I did it.  The whole workout.  And then I did it again.  And again!  Apparently my many months of Zumba-ing and Water Fit-ing all over town have paid off.  Now I’ve graduated to Week 2 with 90 seconds of running and 2 minutes of walking.

The thing is I want this so bad.  I want to finally be able to label myself as a runner without having my nose grow.

Tomorrow I am going to Seattle for four days to help Amy celebrate her birthday in style.  (80′s prom style. You can bet there will be a blog post coming…) Since hearing of my new hobby, Amy suggested we run on Saturday.  To which I said, “You got it as long as running in 60 second spurts won’t slow you down at all.”

This program is supposed to get you to the point where you can run a 5K in just 9 weeks.  I’m not going to push myself.  If I have to repeat weeks and days, I do.  The important thing is that I will do it.  One thing that having diabetes has showed me is that I have some serious will power.  I am strong like bull.

And crossing that finish line of my first 5K will taste way better than a year of chocolate ever could.