Join the first ever EDS 5K!

I love running and I love eating healthy, delicious foods. I also have a strong proclivity towards hanging with friends/new friends and giving back to this awesome world that we inhabit. Sunday, June 2nd I will be hosting the first ever Exercise Doesn’t Suck 5K at a park in Montgomery County, PA. Participation will be $10, of which every penny of profit will be donated to the Agatston Urban Nutrition Initiative (http://www.urbannutrition.org/about-us/). This is an organization that works to improve public understanding and apllication of healthy lifestyle chocies and nutrition in the youth of West Philadelphia.

We’re gonna meet up at 10 am and run/walk/skip/crawl 3.2 miles together. Your level of physical fitness is absolutely a nonissue. While this is technicaly going to be a race, camaraderie rather than competation will be the big theme of the day. Everyone is encouraged to go as slow or fast as they feel comfortable and myself and (hopefully) several other familiar faces will be back and forth throughout the “race” struggling right beside you. At the end of the race we’ll have a small picnic, of food so good, you would never believe it was good for you. We’ve all seen each other at shows throughout the years, so lets go hangout and do something good for our bodies and our local community for a few hours on a (presumably) sunny Sunday afternoon.

Email me at edsuck123@gmail.com if you would like to attend and you will receive a confirmation message and the rest of the required information.  Bring 10 bucks cash to the park (that sounds sketchy),  and then we will have an awesome afternoon together. Space is limited to 30 participants, so no dillydallying.

• This is not some fancy dancy, big production thing. I want a group of us to have a fun and healthy afternoon together, that is all. This is a test run for a larger idea, so the location information will only be given to participants. If this goes well I hope to have a much larger, general admission 5K, later this summer, but for now, yeah. Permits are expensive.

**Soupy isn’t necessarily gonna be there. I feel like I should say that.

Sound good?

For those feeling uncertain about this, please consult the blog post below. Thanks for your time!

Why should I run?

OK, so my writing this is in no way my presupposing that no one gets the joy of exercise, or that everyone is a bum, or anything weird and pejorative like that. Totally not that at all. I’m writing this to communicate with the fellow Me’s out there. People that deep inside want more out of life, but haven’t quite found the golden ticket to it.

I am not an athletic person, or a particularly coordinated one for that matter. In fact, other than talking and thinking really quickly (thank you ADHD), I’m not really naturally good at anything at all. Up through my teenage years this fact was a major hinderance in my ability to navigate life with any sort of competency. If you have nothing to feel confident about, nothing really works out, ya know? Ya know.

I am now happy as a peach and absolutely love being me. How did this happen? Well, the road to self discovery is a fairly long, and varied one, and I won’t bog down your day with my full story. To be honest, I’m still figuring a lot of it out for myself, but I guess that’s the point of it, ya know? Again, ya do know.

What I am certain of is this. When I was a miserable, self hating, emo lord of an 18 year boy I tried running for the first time and it sucked and I couldn’t even complete a mile. In strict adherence to the rules of my life up until that point I was wholeheartedly prepared to bail on the tyrannical motherfucker that is rapid foot movement, but for once, I didn’t. I kept trying. I tried to run again the next day. When I was too exhausted after a quarter mile, instead of giving up, I would walk the rest of the mile, then maybe try running again for even just the tiniest bit more. I quickly discovered that by pushing through the pain, even just a little, I got in return the biggest reward my body could give me (drumroll), endorphins. Endorphins, meaning endogenous morphines, literally awesome, good for you drugs, that your own body makes, just for you. Science, am I right? Good stuff.

With the new found discovery that I could naturally self-medicate my physically pain in the truest sense, I was slowly able to run further and walk less. Bit by bit, run by run I got better, and I went further.  I had finally done something that was brutally far outside of my comfort zone and actually succeeded in it. I was a runner.  Now when I arrive at a venue completely emotionally worn down from the natural wear and tear of tour existence, I can blast out a 8+ mile run and just bathe in the endorphins.

The realization that I, sweet Michael Kennedy, could push myself through such a seemingly insurmountable obstacle completely changed my life. With one victory I erased an entire future of definite defeats. Becoming a runner was the first step to getting where I am now, a place where I see challenges in front of me, not just endless dead ends.

You may be thinking by now, hey, can’t I just like, do something else that’s hard for me to achieve this goal? What’s with all the run chat? OK, yes, that’s true, and good extrapolation reader! The point of all this is simply to illustrate the axiom that the good things in life don’t always come easy, and the truly great never do.

It’s 2013 and it’s time for all of us to come to grips with the fact that there is absolutely nothing charming or endearing about being miserable. Yes, life is hard. Fucking duh.  But when you die, you are dead, so make the most of the existence you have, and put in the necessary physical and emotional work to be able to live your life to the fullest.