ran down. p1.

I had played basketball that year, solely because of my friends. I didn't want to be left out of their fun (I say their fun, as it was in no way fun for me). It was also my first year of high school - the awkward year - and I didn't want to be stuck in seventh period with the un-basketballed rejects, and the sophomores that were re-taking physical science because they failed it the year before. But after hearing that we would have to run track in the off season, I knew their fun would no longer include me. I tried it for a day...The mandatory running, after the basketball coach gave us a pep talk about about how we are so much stronger than those PE girls, that "sit up there on their butts in the mezzanine area, eating chips and soda pop", while we are out here, "challenging ourselves" by running in circles. CIRCLES.

Around, say, lap three (post pep talk), I exhaustedly explained to my best friend Shaya, who was running next to me, that "this being made to run thing just isn't my thing". I ran right off of the track, waving at the coach with a smile on my face, on my way to join the lazy PE girls.

That was my last memory of running, until the spring of my junior year. I bought my prom dress in the fall, in the middle of volleyball season, at the height of my physical condition. By spring, I was finding it difficult to fasten. We were approaching April, the chosen month, and the fastest way I knew to drop pounds, based on what I had read, was by running. I began eating a lot of saltines and steamed broccli, and also, running up and down my long pot holed driveway. Up and back once was 1⁄10 of a mile. Up and back twenty times equaled two miles; that's what I did. I remember running out the door during the nine o'clock hour, battling the voice of my mother even after the door was shut. "I don't like you running out there after dark," she would say. "It's our driveway, mother," I would respond. "It's not like I am running down the highway...And I don't like the idea of not being able to attend prom because I can't fit into my dress." I would slam the door behind me at some point mid sentence.

This is where my personal relationship with running began; I would spend the next-nearly-ten-years of my life undoing the damage I imposed upon one of the {now} most joyous {activities} currently filling my days.