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Confession: Walking While Running
Ridiculous standards runners hold only themselves to
If I ever found myself in conversation with a runner who mentioned that they take walk breaks, or sometimes stop running and walk instead, I’d think nothing of it. Yet every time I was out running, and gave into the urge to walk, I was overcome with an itchy angst.
I got into running distance originally by walk-running, or ralking please, for months. The day I finally completed a mile, about eight years ago now, was monumental to me. I built up to a half marathon within a year. And I stayed in that distance range, at a steady pace until 2020.
But a weird thing happened during this pandemic. I started taking long walks in addition to my runs, thinking my fitness would improve. And maybe it was stress, or my age, or uncertainty, or lack of sleep, or who knows what, but my runs started getting slower, and then slower. And once summer temps descended, I was almost only walking every time I got out.
So of course I freaked out a little and started searching for all kinds of explanations. I tried to force myself to do pick ups, and changed routes, and bought new sneakers, and read articles about women running while aging, and looked at the effects of stress. Carrying a mask around my wrist, I adjusted the time I ran, the distance…
