From Crawling to Walking to Running

Babies don't just come out and start running.  No~ for the longest time, they're pretty immobile and the parents think it's cute that they're still.  Little by little, the baby learns to crawl, and the parents think the baby is still cute, going from one place to another little by little.  The baby begins to go pretty fast and starts to become a handful but before that happens, he or she learns to take his or her first baby steps.  At the first steps, everyone's eyes are watching because it's literally the next step in the child's life.  To the parents, it means a lot to see their child start walking... but the child won't stop there.  After the first cute little memorable steps, they start going longer and longer and start walking faster and faster.  Eventually, the parents are forced to kick the child our of the house because they have so much energy that it's impossible to contain them inside, and out the child goes, to the world outside, where everything is bigger and where he or she can go further.  That walking turns into running as the child learns to pick up his or her pace, and as the child's world gets bigger, the child's radius becomes bigger as he or she starts going places.

I remember as a child when I first went out, I pretty much stayed at home, but little by little, my boundary increased as I learned new places to go to and new things to see.  As I grew older, I started going further and further away, especially with the use of trains, and as a high school kid, I started cycling to school (which was only 3.5 miles away), cycling even further by the time I got used to it, to visit our rival school which was over ten miles away.  As a high school kid, this was a big feet... but I decided to challenge myself by running that distance.  That challenge ended rather poorly because I ended up getting lost and running further than what I wanted.

As we grow, we strive to push ourselves forward, but when we do so, we take steps.  We take steps because one leads to another.  We can't skip them because in doing so, we risk hurting our bodies.  We crawl first, then walk, and THEN we run.  There is no other way.  It all starts in one place and gradually we get to the next place.  Of course, there's going to be significant points, when you accomplish something new, but that only happens because you've taken the right steps towards that.  Change doesn't happen overnight.  It takes discipline and hard work to get there.  Take things one step at a time and grow strong.

Today, I'm back at the walking stage, walking 3.79 miles in 1:03:39, an average of 16:55 min/mile, not too bad after the 50 mile race.  I know that running would be too much for my legs to handle, but walking would do me good.  I'm working my way up in order to get to where I want to be, and I know that ESPECIALLY now, I can't afford to start running too soon and end up hurting myself.  Train smart, live smarter.