This fall, two relay teams of four Daily Arts staffers will train for and run the Probility Ann Arbor Marathon. But as writers, we can’t just run the race — we have to write about our past experiences with running, how we are preparing for the marathon, what we look forward to and what we are afraid of.
Full transparency here: I’ve never been consistent with anything. Not with school, not with work, not even with hobbies — and certainly not with exercise. I struggle to find the time for things I’m passionate about, much less things I feel I have a begrudging obligation to do. I’ve always been the type of person to pick something up and put it down 20 minutes later, distracted by something else. And yet, I’m supposed to be training to run a relay marathon. Something you definitely, definitely should train for — consistently.
How’s that going for me, you may ask? Not too good, not too bad.
I signed up for this race about a month ago. The moment I got the news that I would be running the third leg (5.7 miles), I pulled out my Google Calendar and made myself a schedule. At 9 a.m. every day before classes, I would run four miles, shower and head to class. I even gave myself the weekends to recover. Now, it’s almost a month later, and I don’t think I’ve followed that schedule once.
It’s not that I didn’t try to follow it. On day one of my training, I dragged myself out of bed and ran around the Palmer Commons facility track until my lungs hurt. On day three, however, my bed was too comfortable to leave and my body was as heavy as a corpse. The next week, I tried again to follow this schedule, and it almost stuck — until day four came and went. My training schedule was thus forgotten and laid to rest; natural order returned to my life once more.
I didn’t forget about the marathon or the looming deadline above my head. I still wasn’t a fast runner, and I didn’t even know if I could run six miles. And yet, all of this pressure couldn’t get me to do what I thought every other runner naturally could: train consistently. Every runner I know always seems to wake up at 5 a.m. with a smile and run 100 miles before getting ready for the day an hour later, rejuvenated by the exercise. Part of me still thinks it’s some kind of superpower, easily accessible to everyone but me.
It’s not that I’m not taking this seriously, I really am — I just also have to work with myself to find some kind of healthy medium. Dealing with my routine-averse brain is like negotiating with a knife-wielding toddler. There is no winning — only damage control. I know I’m not the consistent type, and that’s okay. I just have to work around that part of me.
So instead of the everyday wake up, get changed, run around, shower, go to class schedule, I had to come up with a new (frankly, ridiculous and quite embarrassing) method. I have two alarms that go off every day of the week. Instead of morning runs, I’ve set these to go off a few hours after my classes end. My alarm blares, the word “RUN???” illuminating the screen. It gives me a built-in option to deny a workout if I feel I’m too busy, but this way, I’ve also given myself no excuse if I really feel I have an hour of free time. This has led to me running at any hour of the day, whether it’s 2 p.m. on a Monday or 8 p.m. on a Thursday. I now find myself training three times a week at the very least, but without rhyme or reason as to when that training actually happens.
I’m happy I found this schedule; it’s allowed me to train in a way that works for me, however unconventional it may be. I know I’ll never be the kind of runner to hit the pavement every day or gather the motivation to wake up with the sun, but that doesn’t really matter to me as long as I’m running. My way is a little silly, a bit inconsistent. But if it works, it works.
Daily Arts Writer Ana Torresarpi can be reached at atorresa@umich.edu.
