Embrace discomfort and just keep starting
I've been a runner for more years of my life than I haven't. I started running as a soccer player. Our high school warmup included 15 minutes of running laps around the field and school building before practice started. Then followed 2 hours of practice with more running, and suicide sprints at the end. I was a midfielder. I read somewhere that on average a midfielder runs 5-9 miles per game. So I was used to running, even if I wasn't a "Runner." Then in the fall my senior year, I fractured my ankle and had to have a metal plate and 6 screws inserted to put it back together.
After months of healing & PT, I was ready to move but not ready to play soccer and risk contact on my freshly knitted bone. One day, I felt like running. There was a quarter mile track at the gym, so I ran. Just for fun. No pressure, no mile times. Just for the joy of moving again.
Throughout college, I kept running - across campus, across town, but almost never on a treadmill (I'm an outside runner). I entered my first 5k race in Starkville. By myself, just for fun, early on a Saturday morning. My non-athlete friends thought I was crazy, but I was just doing the miles I had done on a soccer field for 10 years.
Running was where I thought things through then cleared out my head. Where I learned to breathe...and to spit. It was where I went when I felt frustrated, alone, worried, or stressed but also where I went when I felt happy, strong, excited or content.
I kept running after college and through my first job, adding longer races. I organized Corporate Cup teams, joined the Omaha Running Club and made running friends. I ran with coworkers, strangers and my future husband. I ran through 3 pregnancies and a move to Colorado, where I discovered the exquisite pain of both distance and trail running. I ran 1/2 marathons and full marathons, and ran in every state I traveled to for work. I joined a 200-mile ultra relay team and experienced what is still my #1 top run of my entire life.
I've raised 3 running kids and still have that runner husband. I've had periods of 40+ weekly mileage add periods of 0-5 weekly mileage. After more than 30 years of uphills, downhills, pavement, dirt trails, the occasional treadmill, fast miles, slow miles and run-walk miles, on my run today I was thinking about why I run. What keeps me doing it? After all, it isn't inherently enjoyable to run. But I still do it.
I think it's a little about mindset. The ability to sit in something uncomfortable so you can reach a bigger goal, like a distance or race that you paid $150 to enter. The skill of getting comfortable with being uncomfortable is arguably the most important to have as a runner. The first mile is always ugh. You may not even feel warmed up until mile 3. But if you don't accept the uncomfortable beginning, you'll never get to that sweet spot. You have to find a way to live in the uncomfortable, in running and in life.
It's also about identity: I am a runner. Runners run. So, I run. I can't be a runner if I don't run, as one of my kids so poignantly pointed out during an off period last year. The simplicity of this wisdom hit me dead-on. I have to run to be a runner. And I'm a runner. So I run. There's no way around it. Kid logic.
It's about the sweat and the breathing - deeply meditative after a few miles. A good sweaty run where you cleanse your body from the inside out is cathartic. The rhythmic belly breathing is much like yogic or meditative breathing. But you get to be outside, enjoying nature and seeing things. Running is a physical reset for my body. And as a runner, you are in generally good enough condition to up and do most things - a vacation hike? Sure. A long walk? Ok. 10 miles walking around NYC? No problem. My goal is to still be running and racing when I'm 80, because if I can do that I can probably do anything else I want to.
From running I got my life mantra: Just keep starting. Need to stop or walk? Start again after you catch your breath. Injury or illness? Start again when you're healed. Busy life? Start again when you can find 15 minutes. It doesn't have to be long or fast, just start. This applies to new challenges or pivots in life outside of running, too. If you want to do new things, you have to start. And then keep starting , for as long as you're alive. Put on your shoes, commit to the discomfort, and then start. And just keep starting.