Runner Day One

Stats:

Weight: 192.8 lbs

Waist 43.5 inches.

Run:

Run by Trish Martin at 05:02pm on Sunday, 10/28/2012 Add Run Notes

• 1.2mi Distance
• 0ft Elevation
• 19:58 Moving Time
• 16:24/mi Avg Pace
• 210 Calories

Pathetic...I know...and no matter how many times I tell myself that it is only doing it that matters right now, I don't FEEL like that was any kind of victory. In fact, it sucked. Completely.

When I was a kid I loved to run, it was easy, effortless, and I don't actually think I knew it was possible to be unable to run a little more, a little faster. Even in high school, when I was busy identifying myself with the 'heads (yes, as in potheads) rather than the Jocks or the Brains, or the Artsy ones, I still was a great runner. I only noticed it once a year during the President's Physical Fitness semester we did in Gym class at the beginning of every school year, but I was pretty fit as a kid, I ran, rode my bike, we lived on a lake so we swam from early spring to late summer, we ran around in the woods playing horses or some cops and robbers variation or another. But Gym class was still usually about embarrassment and humiliation. I was fine for things like running or sit ups that didn't require any grace or co-ordination, but add a ball or a target and it usually ended with me turning red, and my classmates laughing and jeering. Once we got to the running though I could leave all but the track team in the dust. The track coach asked me every year if I wanted to join the track team, but it never happened. 

For the last four years I have been trying to make up for the decade before that, you see I turned into a complete couch potato for slightly over 10 years. I don't know exactly how that happened, I mean I always did like reading and TV and later computers and the internet, but it usually was balanced out with playing with my kids, and other active things.  No wait....that's IT! I am blaming the fact that my kids grew up and didn't want to play with me anymore! OK maybe not...

Five years ago I decided to make some changes. I smoked, I was about 25 lbs overweight, I didn't eat well, I got winded climbing a flight of stairs, nothing earth-shattering, the usual "I'm in my 40's" taking stock that so many people go through. My relationship wasn't good with my then bf either, and I was working too much, playing video games too much and not taking care of myself or my relationships. 

I quit smoking in May of 2008. I had tried before, cold turkey, and never made it more than a day or so, this time I went with Chantix. All I can say is although some people should watch the side effects, my only ones were a mild nausea, and vivid dreams, which were fun(!) I really enjoyed those, as did my new boyfriend who enjoyed hearing about them every day. (Or pretended to, he was and is an amazing man) He was a big help too, since he had quit smoking several years earlier and nudged me in the direction of quitting sooner rather than later.

With him I ride bike (no motor) and we can go up to 30 miles in one outing, but that hasn't seemed to be enough to get that weight to go down, or even to stop going up! Even in the summer when we go three times a week I only managed to budge my weight by a couple of pounds, which have since returned. I do eat more carefully, I have added lots of fruit and vegetables, I try to eat less junk food, but still, that scale is not my friend....well it is my friend actually, it tells me the truth, whether I like it or not!  

So, now the all out assault on my weight begins. I will run, it will get easier, I hope, soon. I will also add weight training to my regimen, and as you will soon learn, I have many other fitness tricks in my basket. I am currently at least 50 lbs overweight. I did used to weigh 127 most of my young adult life, but I was sooo skinny that people used to ask me if I was anorexic, or bulimic, which I always found offensive. Ha ha, no one ever asks me that anymore.