Run Girl Run: A Real Running Jouney

This is a featured guest post from Lena Carpenter who usually writes all about her food adventures and love of wine for our sister blog Savory Salvations. We invited Lena to share her amazing story of running and health perseverance with us on Real Life Salvations.

One of the benefits of growing up in a small Texas town was the ability for a regular girl with limited athletic ability to join any sports team her heart so desired. With that being said, if I were to pick one person in my family who was the least athletic while I was growing up, I would immediately choose myself. Despite this I can honestly say my younger sister and I had an active life regardless of my lack of sports activities. With a big backyard equipped with a volleyball net, basketball hoop, large swing set, along with bikes and scooters that we would ride around the dirt roads we grew up on. I have vivid memories of us playing outside as we grew up and though we didn’t realize it – we were adding exercise to our daily activities.

Like most women, time went on and I left the nest for college and my physical activity and exercise began to dwindle. Towards the end of my collegiate career I gained an internship at a business that was fast paced and required constant physical activity. As I mentioned in my introductory post, I have been blessed with a naturally thin physique for most of my life. However, after I graduated from university life and left my fast paced internship for a regular desk job, I immediately began to notice that a lack of physical activity was catching up with me in a way it never had in my younger years. My metabolism was slowing down, so for the first time in my life I joined a gym and slowly started adding some moderate jogging to my workout. As I began building endurance with jogs, my progress was interrupted with an injury to my cervical spine. Eventually this injury would require surgery and months of physical therapy followed. Immediate exercise was out of the question. Slowly, I began to add exercise back to my routine but a return to jogging was not an option as the impact would create a great deal of pain at this point. For several years even walking long distances was difficult.

Beach to Bay Run's amazing views

I credit Bikram Yoga with giving me a therapeutic and effective exercise program post-surgery. The heated room (105 degrees) and 26 posture series gave me the strength and flexibility I had lost due to my injury. In fact – I eventually gained more strength and endurance than I ever had before! A few years ago I decided to join a gym again and began adding weight training to strengthen my upper body, as my muscles were still weak around my cervical region. Years of rehabilitation and a focus on exercise had finally paid off and almost a year ago I decided to return to the track where I had started jogging pre-injury.

Lena with sister Dr. Kristina Valadez, P.T.

 I recall running one lap straight with no pain resulting and excitedly sharing the news with my sister, a physical therapist, and my brother-in-law. My brother in law happens to be a stellar athlete, competing in several triathlons per year with an Ironman scheduled in a few months. Some of my best friends have also started competing in these physically demanding races, and I happily hold the title of cheerleader at the events! Watching these competitions has secretly created a desire over the last year to compete in an event of my own – specifically a run. Several months ago my sister (the athlete in our family) approached me about joining her team for Beach to Bay – a Texas relay marathon that happens to be the largest in the US. I immediately accepted, seeing this as an opportunity to prove to myself that I am in fact, stronger than I have ever been – post or pre surgery. With two months to train, I began immediately and returned to the jogging track I had begun running at prior to my injury. I was pleasantly surprised to find that I could run 1.25 miles without stopping – a great feat for a “non-athlete” like myself.

For the first month I continued to train on this track – pushing myself to go further each time. For new runners like myself, I found this was an easy and effective way to track my progress since the distance was easily measurable. After a month of running three times a week, I was up to 4 miles - .2 miles away from the distance I was to run in the relay. I then moved my training to my neighboring roads and added another element to assist me with tracking my progress – Runkeeper is a free app available for iPhone, which maps your distance and calculates the speed of your run (minutes/mi). This app has proven to be a vital part of my training, allowing me the ability to gain greater insight on my progress from run to run. Finally, on May 19^th the big day arrived and the cheerleader finally became the competitor. Despite heat in the high 90’s, I proudly finished my 4.2 miles (5^th leg of the relay) in 44 minutes!

Beach to Bay 2012 running team The Six Non-Blondes

So why the departure from my typical food chatter on Savory Salvations to discuss my running journey? The simple truth is that exercise and sound eating habits are both essential to good health. It is my hope that a non-athlete like myself can potentially inspire other non-athletes to pursue your own exercise program – running or otherwise.

The fact is – if I can do it, anyone can!