Only three days into the 2016 New Year, I had found myself late one evening in the heart of Los Angeles. Running down Hill Street towards Temple, with Christianna endurance, I had just pulled out of nowhere, when I hit an emotional pocket of feelings and revelations.
In this moment, I was running a truly terribly slow 5k. I could have been at home recouping from the holidays drinking a hot cocoa, maybe even a hot cocoa with a little something extra. It was cold, it was late, I was alone, I was slow and nowhere near athletic. Yet, in this god awful moment of struggles, I knew I was exactly where I was meant to be. Despite my difficulties with this small 3.1-mile run, I realized that this thing I thought insignificant was actually the best thing for me. This thing was all mine. I did not have to share this with anyone, and through ownership of this small thing, I finally found something I didn’t realize I was looking for; something I wanted for my life after graduation.
The beginning of this year I decided to start on a quest to finally figure out who I wanted to be, and I stumbled, or ran, finally into something I could say I was; Christianna, runner.
Up until this point, I was feeling numb to the world; the holiday season had come, and to me, it felt like the worst and loneliest Christmas break I had to somehow manage to get through. It took so much energy to brave the smiles and the dinners when all I wanted was to be holed up in my room alone and away from all the stupid cheer.
Going to the gym every night during my winter vacation was just a way to show the world “it’s all good, I’m getting out of bed and doing things like a functioning human person.” When in reality, I was angry and depressed. Looking back, I think physical activity at this time helped me to ignore my pains and kept numbing my feelings. Christianna managed to turn a healthy activity into something not so healthy.
At the end of the New Year, however, even despite feeling hopeless, I knew I wanted to change and find ways to better myself. Naturally, being so close to graduation, the feelings of realizing I had no fucking clue what I wanted to do after college were becoming very real. This is a feeling that gets stronger and stronger as you inch closer to graduation. Combine that with other feelings in my life and you could call it a pot of hot mess.
I desperately needed to find something I wanted for myself in life. Maybe, just maybe, through that pursuit, I’d find direction for my life. My plan? I created a bucket list for 2016 of all the things I wanted to do and accomplish.
For the record, I admit I didn’t think I’d accomplish all these items. 2016 has come and gone and I did not get a tattoo or go skydiving; I didn’t do tough mudder and sadly I didn’t get killer biceps. It was something on my wall to serve has a big fat reminder to get out of my room and live every once in awhile. Oh god, did this thing lead to many adventures that in fact, hardly did I ever have time this year to barricade in my cave.
I needed self-improvement and craved adventures and January 3, 2016, was just the beginning of it all.
I’ve had this idea in my head for years of becoming a runner. My father was a marathoner and triathlete. I remember pulling out his LA Marathon medal as a kid and oohing and ahhing over it. There was one night he tried to help me run, after being called fat by my mother; he proceeded to lecture me all the way down Magnolia about breathing techniques and how she’s just afraid I’ll die by the time I’m 30(5 more years to go till we see if she’s right :O). There was a time I tried to pick it up after high school when I went running with my sister and her friend and totally got smoked. Then again for a bit with my ex because we were talking about possible hopes of a marathon, again totally smoked every time we went running together.
I put having a faster 5k time on my bucket list because I wanted to prove to myself I was faster and stronger than I believed.
I’ve learned lots of things while working on that goal. Such as, on this day, in particular, I learned that a dinner out at the Alcove of delicious tacos and an IPA is not a great idea before a run. I also learned that I wasn’t going to get as cold as I thought I would so 3 layers of clothing was completely unnecessary. As well as my shoes were useless as shit and countless other lessons. Fun stuff.
I hadn’t actually been running consistently yet, I also still really hated the act of it all. In defense, I didn’t expect to go out on this first one and run the whole thing through so early on in this endeavor. Instead, I saw this as an opportunity to give it an actual real shot and set a real PR (personal record) to strive towards beating this year. I think I actually ran it in 3-minute intervals that quickly turned into 30-second intervals towards the end. Yes, I was slow, and yes I kept walking but I had actually put real, true, lovely pure effort into this one thing.
Running towards the finish line on January 3rd, 2016 listening to “I Love It” by Icona Pop was a life changing moment for me. This is when I said, “who the f* cares” to all the shit of the past. I learned that I loved this feeling of overcoming your self-doubts despite my body’s difficulties. I hypothetically threw all that shit in a bag and pushed it down the stairs. I was going to take back my life, make bold choices, do things I could be proud of, because “I’m a 90’s bitch” and I was going to own this year.
365 days later, 5 5k’s and 2 half marathons later, I have fallen in love. Running has taken over my life. It moved in, said “I get you these days” and has even thrown some hard balls in my way. This first run of the year lit a spark in me that quickly grew like a southern California wildfire. I’ve become obsessed. I’ve become invested. This has become my life.
I still hang on to this moment tightly and return to it when my runs get hard and I want to stop. I’m still slow. I’m still working on being able to keep up with other runners. I also still have moments of doubt that I could ever get good at this. When my steps start to weaken, I remind myself of the time I barely finished a 5k. I encourage making memories of your own to start off 2017: set goals, go to work on goals, pull these mini accomplishment memories out when life gets tough and you start slowing down. For all goals in life, health, and work. Having these moments of the tiniest bits of accomplishment motivate us to not give up and to pick up a stronger pace because hells yes you’re going to surpass that first success!
Christianna Who? 