I've never been a runner or a jogger for that matter. In fact, for as long as I can remember myself, I've resisted it as much as I could.
When I was in elementary school and later in middle and high school, I've dreaded physical education classes that involved long distance runs. I've dreaded physical ed classes altogether. The matter of a fact was that we've never trained for the long runs and only had to run 'for time', meaning the teacher 'clocked' us once in a while and as a result of which either passed or not the class. (Though there is a possibility that I was skipping the training classes and only showed up for when it was time to pass it and move on to the next activity, I cannot remember now). At some point we were even graded based on how long it took us to run 1K, 5K and whatever other long run tortures there were.
What can I say, I wasn't an athletic child. Running was not the only physical activity I was trying to avoid. Push-ups, pull-ups, jumping, you name it.
Yet sometimes, in my teens, during those "I need to loose weight fast" periods I would go for jogs. I still remember the time when my childhood friend Aida and I would wake up early in the mornings, jog along the river enjoying the waking nature, take a quick swim in the lake and run back just in time for school. Then I joined a basketball team for a year which involved more than running to avoid the routine but I was missing the 'tom-boy' in me to continue with it.
After high school, I've given up any activities that required running (except for running late to lectures at the college runs in between the connecting flights) until several summers ago when I joined the summer frisbee league in Columbus. And that was fun but everyone on that league was in so much better running- and (important!) catching- frisbee- shape that I've given it up quickly as well.
Now, in the last couple of years I've picked up jogging again. At first, I found it to be a very boring activity and after 0.2(!) miles I would replace it with fast walk. My only motive was to gain leg strength and I figured running would give me fast-track ticket for it.
What finally made it to work for me was digital books! I would pick up some interesting and captivating books and throw them on my ipod and would listen to them only when jogging or walking on ecliptic machine at the gym. And sometimes on my bike rides. Curiosity of what happens in the next chapter motivated me to take upon any physical activity as that would be the only time I would listen to these stories.
Sometimes, I would replace the library's digital books to the tracks of Enigma. I found that flow-y, spacey, meditative sound of Enigma's music allowed me to dictate my own pace of how fast I wanted to go and was so relaxing that I felt like I almost meditated during my jogs. My thoughts would take off and I no longer would catch myself think about 'is it over yet?'.
I've been listening to Enigma every day for two weeks now and increased the jogging distance from .2 to 1.3 miles a night. And now am looking forward to start listening to the "Cold Mountain". I just hope that as long as I keep my mind off jogging while jogging will keep me motivated long enough to turn this activity into a habit.
