Calling myself a runner is a very new concept, and still a bit of a foreign one. Getting to even this point has been a long journey, and the path to my goal is still stretching for miles ahead of me—13.1 miles, to be exact.
I’ve never been in great shape. My family has never really been one for great nutrition, and food was always around when I was growing up—in the form of “after-school snacks,” “goodnight snacks,” and well-stocked cabinets. I don’t mean to slight my family at all, but responsible eating habits were never really ingrained; I managed to be an average-weight kid by taking tap classes and being relatively active. I hated organized sports in general though, and would much rather skip gym class and read a book.
In high school I had finagled my schedule to substitute my gym requirement with a dance class, but everything changed my freshman year when my right knee went out. My knee would dislocate itself (seemingly on a whim; it could happen any time) and swell to the size of a balloon, and after this happened several times my doctor ordered surgery to prevent it from happening again. The surgery was followed by several months of physical therapy, along with the knowledge that despite the operation, pressure on my knee or hard activity could still injure it. For years I was afraid of playing sports or games that could possibly injure my knee, and I got used to babying it.
Living on my own while in college truly tipped the scales on my weight gain: my eating habits worsened and I was hardly exercising at all. I could see myself gaining weight, but somehow thought myself powerless to do anything about it. I would go to the school gym and exercise for a few days, then get tired and turn to the same patterns of inactivity and poor eating. One of my friends at the time had been a runner all through high school, and I mentioned how much I admired her for it and how interesting running as a sport seemed. She was excited for me and lent me a book on running, but I could never seem to get around to reading it.
I was officially overweight my senior year, when I kept having pains and was sometimes ill to the point of vomiting, but these occasions were several months apart and I always chalked them up to stress, not my lifestyle. One day though I was in excruciating pain and had to go to the hospital, only to learn that the pain I had been ignoring for months had turned into gallstones and severe pancreatitis. According to the doctor, if I had ignored the pain for another day or two I would have died from it. I had my gallbladder removed and was in the hospital for a week, getting out on what would have been my graduation day from college. I was recovering for a few months, unable to eat fibrous foods and gaining a few more pounds, as losing a gallbladder can make you retain more fat.
You’d think something like this would be a wake-up call, that I would turn my life around and vow to be healthier. For some reason though, that just didn’t do it. I continued to eat unhealthily and didn’t truly see my weight as something that was in my power to change. It wasn’t until a year later, at the age of 24, that a conversation with my best friend (who was losing weight herself and was an inspiration) showed me that my weight and eating habits were things only I was accountable for, and therefore I could change them. I took things slowly, changing one meal at a time and getting up early to do exercise DVDs, and over the course of a year and a half lost 50 pounds. I was thrilled that I had tangible results from my efforts, was receiving compliments, and went down 6 pants sizes. In the middle of all this I decided to take advantage of an opportunity: I moved in with the same friend who had inspired me to lose the weight when she had a roommate opening in her NYC apartment. I went from south FL to NYC, and loved the city from the moment I got there. One thing I learned though is that NYC always has food to offer, and for a while my eating habits went back downhill. My weight loss hit a plateau (especially after I started dating someone who encouraged me to eat more), and things ground to a halt for a while. I would always talk about losing more weight, but instead rested on the laurels of losing 50 pounds and not gaining it back. It seemed I’d reached a point where to continue losing weight, I’d truly have to work hard at it every day, and I just wasn’t doing that yet.
Which brings us to October 2009. I’d decided to give running a try again; it always stood out to me as a fascinating sport because it is purely self-driven, relying only on yourself to get you across that finish line. I was flipping through a running magazine and saw an ad for the Disney World Princess Half-Marathon, and was transfixed by it. Growing up in Florida I’d been to Disney countless times, and it’s full of happy memories for me and my family. Wouldn’t it be amazing to work my way up to a half marathon, 13.1 whole miles, and celebrate that goal at Disney? Before I’d even really thought it through, I registered for the race and was officially going to be there on March 7, 2010.
And now, I’m fully engaged in my fitness quest. I’m halfway through my training program (more on that later), and have started running more than I ever thought I could. I haven’t lost very much weight yet, but I have found confidence in myself I didn’t know existed—I also plan on incorporating strength training to reach the weight loss goals (more on that later too). I’ll be sharing with you the ups and downs of running with you; maybe there are other aspiring runners out there who will want to go through it with me. It’s an exciting, scary journey—my quest to become a lifelong runner!
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