14 Jun Run Forest, Run!

Today I ran for 30 minutes straight. On the treadmill. On the hill setting. On level 5.

Booyah.

Ever since I had surgery at the age of 13, almost 10 years ago, I have been unable to run. I was able to do other physical activities like yoga, dance, and biking, but every time I tried to run I felt like my body was dying.

Actually dying.

Like, my lungs felt like they were jiggling around inside my body, unable to take in air, stopping me from being able to breathe at all.  Dying. It was the strangest thing.

After many attempts over the years to become a runner I finally gave it a rest and chalked it up to missing 6 feet of my intestine. I figured that since I was missing 6 feet of intestine, my lungs would move around inside of me when I ran because there wasn’t enough internal padding to keep them in place. Without that extra intestine, things were just free flowing everywhere! I figured that without my lungs staying in the proper place, I wasn’t able take in enough air to be able to run. It made sense… at the time.

Last month, for some reason, I decided once more that I wanted to be able to run. Maybe it was the fact that I was living in downtown Toronto and I wanted the ability to run from an attacker if the situation arose. Or maybe it was because I wanted to be able to run to a bus without missing it because the public transit in this city is terrible. Or maybe it was just because I realized that running is great for the body- and man, do I need to make sure I do things that are good for my body.

Well,  a month after deciding once more to be a runner, with a mix of my healthy diet and determination, I slowly worked my way up to it- 2 minutes, 5 minutes, 10 minutes, etc. Before I knew it, I was finally able to run for a full 30 minutes without needing to stop. I didn’t even notice I had done a full 30 until I looked at the time on the treadmill! It was an amazing feeling.

Where will my running take me? Will I do a marathon one day? Who knows! For now, though, I’ll stick to the treadmill.

Hopefully my lungs stay in place.