Starting up Exercise

I have a few friends who are starting out on exercise programs. It is FASCINATING for me to read about it from their viewpoint. It's always tough to make a change like that, and I am happy to see them gutting it out.

It has been a tough week - work was really busy and I had a friend visit from out-of-town one day. Recently, while I was running, I thought back to what it was like when I started to exercise...

I had tried twice when I lived in Houston. As a student, I ran a lap around campus two or three times, taking plenty of walking breaks. Years later, I ran with some co-workers during lunch, in the hot and humid Houston weather, and also gave that up after two of three times, because it was just miserable.

When I moved to Seattle in 1997, I decided to get healthier. I didn't do anything about that for my first year, as I was busy adjusting to work and my new life in the Pacific Northwest. Some friends in Houston visited family in this area, and we got together. They told me they planned to climb Mt. Baker later in the year and invited me along. That sounded exciting, so I decided I needed to "do something" to get in shape, and thought I would try running for the third time. It was early May and the climb was to occur in late August or maybe September, so I had a few months.

So one morning I set my alarm, dressed, and walked over to Green Lake (a park in Seattle I lived very close to) with the goal of running one mile. I made it, very slowly, and walked back home.

Two days later I repeated this scene, but it was much harder to get out the door. I was sore from the previous run, and my ankle hurt. After spending at least 15 minutes waffling, I finally made it out, resolved to plod my one mile or stop when my ankle bothered me too much. Green Lake has a gravel trail around it, so it was nicer than running on pavement.

As a child, I twisted my left ankle pretty severely goofing off chasing a pet around the yard. Later as a freshman in college I re-injured it basically playing tag. So my ankle always bothered me a little - it would typically start to ache slightly after walking any distance. Of course, this would happen during my run but I decided not to let that stop me unless the pain got really bad. At the least I would run on gravel and walk if necessary.

I fell into a pattern of running one mile three times per week. After two months of this, I felt like I could do a little more. My ankle wasn't hurting as much after the mile, so one day on a whim I decided to add another half-mile. Over the weeks I gradually inched my weekly run volume up until after nine months from when I started, I was running two miles three times per week! I was within striking distance of circumnavigating Green Lake, which was 2.8 miles around the inner jogging path.

They day finally arrived - I pushed through to a full lap, and I felt like a hero. As in, finding some stairs and doing the Rocky 2 dance at the top. I didn't want to push myself too much, so I just did the full lap once a week, and again, gradually, built that up to one lap three times per week.

It took me about a year from starting out to get to 2.8 miles three times per week. One day I realized that my ankle didn't bother me any more - running had gradually strengthened my ankle to where the ache I used to eventually feel just walking around, had disappeared. These days my ankles are at risk for a different reason - volleyball. ;)

What happened to the Mt. Baker climb? Well, my friends came back and very apologetically informed me there wasn't room on the trip. They looked like they felt bad, but then I told them that it was OK, I was going to back out anyway! I had zero experience with hiking, climbing, ropes, ice axes, any of the gear involved, and didn't want to be one of those people responsible for a rescue team to come out. It is one thing if you are knowledgeable and have something unplanned happen, and it is another if you are a clueless newbie. And that's what I was, a clueless newbie - I hadn't even hiked up Mt. Si (a nearby eight mile popular challenging hike) so I told them I didn't have any business trying to summit Baker. Later I joined the Mountaineers and learned navigation, ice axe, snowshoe, scrambling, and found that climbing isn't for me. Hiking, backpacking, low grade scrambling is OK, but schlepping around 60 pounds of gear plus the very real risk of injury... nah. I'm glad I didn't go, but the thought of climbing is what originally provided the exercise motivation for me!