My Life as a Bad Runner

Let me start by saying that I have never been, and never will be, a fast runner. I am quite sure a tortoise passed me while I was running hills this morning. If you have arrived here looking for tips on speed or efficiency, this is not the place, and I am not the one.

I will not offer you advice, nor coach you on your mechanics, I will not set a good example, but I will encourage you and your endeavors to reach that place where your soul meets the road.

I was a bad runner as a kid, really bad. The poster child for sedentary lifestyle, I was an overweight couch potato who lived for television and junk food. In sixth grade we had to run a mile for P.E. class, and I came in dead last. It took me seventeen minutes as a twelve-year-old to run a mile, and I hated every humiliating minute of it. Some mornings I still feel like that.

As a teenager, my love of unhealthy things included fast food, smoking, drugs, and alcohol. I was such a bad teenager (more deeply troubled than bad, but that is for another article) that I failed P.E. in high school and was forced to take it in summer school after my senior year in order to graduate. I was already living on my own, without a car, and had to ride my bicycle four miles each way, five days a week, to and from my old high school.