Your Grandma Runs Faster Than Me

And some other musings...

I'm telling you, she does. So the last few days I've decided that since the temperatures are in the balmy 40s and that since the sun is out and shining with all its winter might, that I might as well take advantage. Taking advantage means running out of doors. And when I say running, what I mean is jogging. And when I say jogging, what I mean is that there are speed walkers who could outrace me. On their bad day. No, on their worst day.

I'm just not what you would call fast. My last three outdoor jaunts have averaged around an eleven minute and forty second mile. 11:49 today. That's just a little bit better than five miles an hour, and so I know I do not lie when I say that your grandma can run faster than me.

It was causing me some severe frustration.

I can run faster on a treadmill, and I try to take comfort in that. The other day I ran about three and a half miles and then walked off the last half mile, and I did it in less than forty-three minutes. If I push myself, I can run four miles in under forty minutes, meaning that my time is significantly better on that darned machine, like by seven or eight minutes better, but it just isn't the same, you know? And of course, the treadmill does some of the work for you, and blah blah blah.

But then I decided that I am going to accept it. At least I am out there making the effort, and there is something to be said for that. I can't worry that probably better than half the people I know who NEVER run could go out for a jog, including the old and infirm, and they would beat my time. Because the truth is, that isn't why I do it. I'm doing it for me, and for no one but me. And of course, I wish I could go a little faster, but then, I also wish I had a million dollars and a cute apartment in New York.

So I will have to accept it for what it is.

And then I'll have to go running tomorrow. And the next day. And maybe some day, I'll get faster. And that is just the way life goes, isn't it? You don't always get to choose how things will be. The only fatal thing, as C.S. Lewis would tell it, is to sit down and give up. And I refuse to do that.