Ok that was totally stupid, but it was the only thing I could think of that had a resemblance to my day yesterday. yesterday I ran my first race ever, something I thought I would never ever do. When I was younger I was always an average weight, never fat and on occasions I was even thin, but I never really did any sort of physical activity after dance and gymnastics weren't cool anymore after sixth grade. I liked being outside and trying new things, but the people I used to hang out with were not as enthusiastic about wanting to go out and do stuff. I NEVER attempted to run the mile at school accept once and I passed in 12 minutes ( I thought I was the shit) when most kids were passing it in 8. I mostly just walked and talked to my friends and never gave a crap about it. Years later and I am in college and I'm kicking myself for not being active in anything when I was younger. I wanted to run. I joined the crew club at school, but it ultimately took too much time away from my schedule once I started working part time so I stopped running...and got fat :( Then one day I decided to go to my local running store to get fitted for some shoes so I could start again and going on my first run in a year felt really good; I got pretty far. But the runs tapered off after that, but last year I wanted to try again after two years of schlepping it on the bike in the gym.
My boyfriend likes to run so I thought it would be a fun thing to do together, but let me describ this man to you: 6'3, slender with legs at least a foot longer than mine. I do not possess a runners body. I'm not sure my body was made to do anything efficiently, I can't even sit for a long time without and arm or a foot falling asleep, so when I wanted to start running again it took a lot of hard work. When I told people what I was doing they treated me like a kid selling candybars to raise money for a busch gardens trip "oh that's nice" when secretly they were thinking "she'll make it a mile a die of a heart attack" which could have happened a couple of times. It was like one of the come-uppance sports movies ( I hate to mention Rudy, but it's one of the 3 sports movies I've seen in my entire life) with the Jersey accented coach saying "Yah no good kid, you ain't a runnah! Now git outta hee-yah!" <-- Jersey people, this is a bad over-exaggeration of your accent. My legs are useless stumps,. I might as well be running on knees with feet glued to them. My body is 3 times longer than it should be and my big fat ass creates an awful pounding sensation on my lower body if I only wear running shorts. It's not a pretty sight or a wonderful experience, but I've learned to block everything out and just run. But I went out one afternoon and ran one minute and walked a minute and did that for twenty minutes. Eventually I was making a whole mile by myself. The boyfriend would come with me on some occasions and would be waaaay ahead of me, only to turn back around and run with me, which bothered me more than helped me. I hate people having to come back for me, it made me feel like a handicapped person so I ran solo from them on. Just me and my ipod. One day while reading a magazine I saw an ad for the Shamrock marathon in virginia beach about a7 months away and I had a crazy thought "How about I do that?" then I quickly saw that was ridiculous and saw the 8k ad and decided that was my goal, 4.97 miles in less than an hour I said, and then I started school and went on vacation...Once I got back it was cold, colder than it was the previous year, but an act of God opened the new school gym with an INDOOR RUNNING TRACK and I had no excuse not to run. Yesterday I finished the Shamrock 8k in under an hour. I thought at one point I would die, so I stopped and walked for less than a minute, but my boyfriend ran with me the entire time and made me keep up (though he shortened his stride a lot "I barely broke a sweat" shut up!). I got my medal and it's on my desk now. Thirty five pounds ago this would have been impossible, but now I'm ready for half marathons and all the running there is to come.
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