I Hate Running!

I hate running.
More specifically I hate running just for the sake of running.  The fact is I will gladly run for hours at a time playing floor hockey or soccer because I love those sports.  I enjoy the challenge of chasing down someone on the field of play, winning a race to the ball or outrunning someone on the way to the goal.  Sadly, I don't play these sports much any more.  But I've started running.  And I hate it.  Running every day (or every other day, at first).  Running regularly for 30 full minutes.  Hoping to stretch that into 40 or 60 minutes.  Just running.  No ball, no teammates, no goal, no rules of the game, no race to a finish line, no reason it seems, just running.  Well, there actually is a reason why I am now regularly running (for what seems like no good reason).  I want to be a runner.  It so happens that being a runner requires me to be running.
When I was young I was always a runner.  When I went somewhere outside and I was not going with someone or carrying anything, I ran.  The campus of the private high school where I lived most of my teen years was a conglommeration of classroom buildings, dorms, a cafeteria, rink, gym, chapel, student center, staff residences, bus barns and some other vacant buildings.  I ran from one to the other.  When anyone proposed we play a game in the gym or shoot baskets outside or kick a ball in the field, I gladly joined in and I ran my little legs off.  I ran for miles most days in all of these activities and loved it.  I was a frequent, maybe even a constant, runner.  But I hated running even back then.  I never went out to the track or anywhere else and just ran for the sake of running.  I hated running and still do.
But, alas, I am no longer a runner.  I try running from one building to the next when I am not with someone or carrying anything and it feels awkward.  My heart and lungs and legs and back and feet are so out of shape.  I want to be a runner again.  And so I am running.  Hating every minute of it, but running.
Don't feel sorry for me or try to stop me.  Don't give me any advice or compliments.  Don't invite me to run with you or register for a race of some kind.  I just want to be a runner again and I will be.  And I understand that to really be a runner at my age means that I will need to regularly, even religiously, be running.  Day after day, running.  Logging my minutes, counting the miles, measuring my waist, watching my weight, warming up and cooling down, running, running, and more running.
I hate running.
"Let us run with perseverance the race that is set before us" / Hebrews 12:1