Hi, this is Chris Hubs.

I don’t know why you’re listening to this, but since you are, let’s talk about running.

I was not a hugely athletic youngster as I started.

I enjoyed playing outside, played lots of pickup basketball, some YMCA leagues, never anything in school competitive.

Being homeschooled didn’t give me huge access to those kinds of programs.

Things I liked to do really were the team games.

I played, you know, basketball, some softball, but never really got into running.

When I got out of college and entered the adult world, I enjoyed sedentary habits and baking cookies far more than I enjoyed the exercise, and it got to me after a while.

Sometime in my early 30s, I decided I needed to get into shape somehow, and so decided to take up running.

I remember the first time I went out and tried to jog down the block and got no more than I passed about five or six houses, and I, wow, I can’t, you know, can’t do this anymore.

It’s time to walk and slow down.

It was amazing, though, as I kept after it.

One block led to several blocks, led to the next thing you know, I had done a mile out on the sidewalk and hadn’t had to stop, which was an amazing feeling.

You can only run outside so many months of the year when you live in Iowa, and so I combined that with running on treadmills at the gym during the winter and felt like I was making progress.

I did some 5Ks, I think maybe an 8K, and eventually decided the one year where I was spending a lot of time running, I was going to go for it, and I was going to train and do a half marathon.

That was about 10, 12 years ago now.

I did that half marathon.

Somewhere around mile 11, something in my knee went the wrong way, and it started hurting pretty good.

I kind of limped my way through the end of that half, and then took months to sort of recover.

Probably should have been to a doctor to look at it in some more substantive way, but the symptoms sounded like runner’s knee, and so I lived with it, and I got to the point where it didn’t hurt anymore.

But I was never really able to get back onto it and keep running without experiencing knee pain, and so I finally just tailed off.

I did my best to stay active at the gym with other activities, again a lot of time on the elliptical, riding a bike in the summer, but never really back to running.

Where I finally turned the corner was after—it’s been a little over two years ago now—I finally got serious about diet changes to go with exercise and was able to lose a good bit of weight, and finally said, maybe I should try this running thing again.

Went out in the old pair of tennis shoes I had and went, wow, after a couple miles my knees still hurts.

I went, how old are these shoes?

Maybe it’s time for a new pair.

Broke down, bought the new pair of running shoes, and lo and behold, two, three miles, no problem.

Knees felt good.

Picked up on that, kept going.

Three miles, four miles at a shot.

Got to regular running pace.

Ran some races last year.

Felt really good.

Stayed with it in the gym over the winter on the treadmill.

I was able to increase my pace some, increase my time.

Felt really, really good and enjoyable.

I’d forgotten how enjoyable running could be when your knees weren’t yelling at you all the time.

This year’s been a successful year with the running so far.

My fitness app says I’ve logged more than 500 miles running, which has been great.

I ran a 10K earlier this year that I won my age group in, which was unexpected, and I wasn’t the only one in the age group, so that was a nice accomplishment.

I ran a 5K just a couple weeks ago in just over 24 minutes, which was a PR for me, and I was really quite happy with.

So one of these things I just, I hope I keep with.

I did a long run to see how it would feel last week.

The legs felt good.

I’m like, I’ll just keep going.

And I ended up running 10 miles, which I was feeling it by the end.

But I have given myself a couple rest days, got back to it, a couple shorter runs here this week, and everything still seems to be in the right places and no sustaining pain.

So I’m going to keep with it.

I don’t know what the long term looks like for me with it, but as long as everything seems to still feel good and keep in place, I’m going to keep with it.

It’s been a great way to feel active, to be active, and my body feels a lot better when I do it.

So that’s my fun with running.

I hope you have a thing that you can do that your body feels good with in activity too.

We’ll talk later.