Gym Class and running

For most of you, it's not going to come as a big surprise that I hated gym class. To the few of you who who haven't known me all that long, you might be a little surprised because you know that I ran (past tense because I haven't since I was about 3 months pregnant).

My 2 least favorite times of the year were gymnastics time and the Canada Fitness Testing. More specifically, gymnastics time and the Canada Fitness Test distance run. When I was younger, I thought I was terrible at running and that's why I never did very well at it. When I got a little older, I thought it was because I spent most of the run walking and talking with my friends until the teacher told us to run (I never did well at it so why bother).

Now, it pisses me off. You spend the whole year doing nothing more than asking the kids to do short distance runs (while playing other sports) and then one day you're asked to run long distance. No wonder only the kids who were involved in after school sports did well. If you asked me to go out and run right now (although I'm still having some post-labour issues so I'm going to get that fixed up first!), I couldn't run very far. I started running very gradually and near the end, I was running almost 5km pretty much non stop. I never pushed myself further because the goal was 20 minutes so whatever I got done in 20 minutes was all I made myself do or I knew I wouldn't sustain it.

Did I suddenly become able to run? No. After years of thinking that I couldn't run, I started a training program 3 days a week. I started running 1 minute and walking 2 minutes. Then the next week 1/1, then 1/2 then 1/3...you see how this goes. Yet we tell kids that if they can't run 1200m (or whatever it is...that rings a bell for some reason), they're bad at running.

You want to do something about our childhood obesity issue? a) don't teach kids that they're either athletes or not. b) teach kids to have fun and play actively...it's not Exercise (with a capital "E") or Sports that keep you healthy and fit, it's activity.

On a sidenote, I am hoping to start running again once it's not cutting into my time with the kid when I'm back at work (when the sun's out longer) because I want to set a good example for the kid. Even if I don't, we will get him used to active play and even just being outside.