Resolution: I will be a runner.

I was remiss this week on posting about the 13-in-13 challenge. I don't want to do it, even now. I really am tired of discussing my failures in losing weight, in eating right, in blowing off exercise. I'm tired of feeling fat and ungainly and like a failure.

It's time to change. Coincidentally, it's also coming time for New Year's Resolutions. I love New Year's, when the year is fresh and new and full of promise. I like looking ahead, imagining the person I want to be when the year ends again, and setting goals to become that person. Last year, I made a commitment to lose weight, and I accomplished that. I lost a lot of weight, and changed the way I looked at myself and the way other people looked at me. I also began a long obsession with dresses, started this blog, ran a 5K, swam laps at my lovely little secret town pool, and joined the online fashion community. It was a really good year.

So, what do I want to accomplish this year? What person do I want to be when 2010 is over? I've got many dreams percolating, about finishing losing this weight, about maybe going back to school for process engineering, about finally getting a new haircut that I really like. But mostly I dream about being a runner.

I like running. I'm terrible at it, and I hate myself about halfway through and I want to quit/die/curl up on a ball on my couch, but I still like it. I like that's it just me and the path in front of me, no expensive equipment save a good pair of running shoes, a chance to tune in my iPod and shut out the world and run. I like what it does to my body, the way it firms up the flabby parts on my dupa and my hips, the way the deep breathing reminds me it's only been 5 years since I quit smoking, and I never thought I would be able to do that. I like wearing cute tops and shorts in the summer, and yoga pants and sweatshirts in the winter. I like running.

So that's the goal: to become a runner once and for all. I don't have dreams of a marathon or even a 10K, not quite yet. I want to run 5Ks, lots of them, all year long. I plan on signing up for as many of them as I can this summer and fall. Until then, I have started the Couch-to-5K plan again; it's been so long since I ran regularly I might as well start over from the beginning. This time I plan on completing it in 9 weeks, which will be just about when the 13-week challenge ends, just before my birthday. (Hey, maybe there is a St. Pat's 5K I can sign up for! I will check that out.)

I started Day 1, Week 1 this morning. It felt good, but no lie, it was hard. The indoor track at my park center has windows on three of the walls, and at 6am there's nothing to see except one's reflection in the glass. It was hard seeing that, seeing things jiggle that haven't jiggled for a while. Accepting that this is the same size body I was dragging around the same track last spring, that all the work and weight loss of the summer was gone and I had a lot of ground to cover again.

But that's okay; I've got my running shoes on, my iPod has some new playlists, and I am ready to go.