mile marker

throughout my whole life i have been the "not so active" poster child. and, granted, it wasn't all my fault, i had mono, epstein barr, and some serious growth spurts that put me into an eternal spiral of napping. i remember waking up, tired, going to school, tired, coming home from school, tired, sleeping, doing homework, tired, sleeping, eating, tired, and then going to bed. not so fun, especially for a teenager. i also remember being woken up on saturday late mornings to my friend's dog licking my face. i never understood why my mom allowed this but i guess she found it amusing. hmmm, i didn't! (thanks becky) so, with this background of never having gym classes, never exerting myself physically too much, and when i did, living with the overwhelming exhaustion after doing normal teenage activities like skiing, i just resigned myself to living the life of someone who wasn't supposed to be very active. so, skip forward two children and another 50 lb. weight gain (yes, 50 lbs with each pregnancy) i needed to do something! so, i started asking my stick thin "i had a baby two weeks ago" friends what they were doing. the overwhelming response was running. i was stumped, i couldn't run a mile in junior high, what made me think i could run a mile now with all this extra weight? with all this self doubt i decided it was worth a shot so i pretended to run... for all of you active people, running is not easy to just decide to do one day! :) and, i signed up for a 5k run with some friends of mine. well, i didn't lose much weight and i for sure didn't run the whole 5k but i had chosen to be active and this really helped the way i was thinking of my post baby body. skip forward another 5 months, i was able to finish a 5k in about 31 minutes, and i got this crazy idea that i might like to finish a half marathon. let's just blame it on the adrenaline rush and lack of oxygen to my brain. and, until this last week i wasn't sure if i could handle it. but once again i've pushed the self doubt away and have been dutifully waking up early, running at least 3 times a week and have slowly added to my long run. i hit a huge goal this week that has boosted my confidence 10 fold. i am now looking forward to my half marathon instead of looking at it with dread and remorse for committing to run. it's amazing to me how with persistence we can change so much about ourselves and i am talking physically but i know this can be applied to spiritual and mental challenges as well. so, in about a month, i'll let you know how my first half marathon went and if i would ever do it again! yikes! that thought is just shy of frightening!