Becoming a Runner

Image via Wikipedia

In the past three months, I’ve become a runner.  It’s an odd transformation, particularly because I’ve run before without becoming a runner.  I was a member of my school’s cross country team during my senior year of high school, but I was a basketball player trying to get in shape after a summer spent working at Burger King.  I was not a runner.  I took a jogging class a couple of years ago and ran over 150 miles in a semester, including two races, but I was a recently married 30 year old woman trying to share my marathon-running husband’s interest.  I was not a runner.

This fall, when I moved, a neighbor asked me if I was a runner; she was in need of a running partner.  I had just finished a 5k a few weeks before, but I hesitated.  I was a person who ran sometimes, but I was not a runner.  Now, after three months of getting up before the sun to run two miles in sometimes freezing weather, I finally feel like a runner.  I ask my marathon-running husband if he’d like to run with me in the evenings.  He shakes his head, “I don’t like running when it’s so cold outside.” .  . .  and he calls himself a Canadian.