A Guest Post from My Friend Amy K.

This is my friend Amy and her "Goofy" husband Chris:

They are two of our friends who've kindly endured about three years of listening to me and Kris talk nothing but running, and racing and our addiction to endorphins. They are kind and patient people. Which is just one reason why we love them.

Amy is the person who introduced me to the Zombies, Run! game. Yeah, she's the one responsible for starting my obsession!  And now she is using the Zombies, Run! 5k training app to train for her first ever 5k! WOOT! (I have the honor of running the 5k with her).

I am so excited for my friend to join the world of racing and expect her to find the same excitement I do in training for and completing an event.  It's hard and sometimes often it hurts. But we love it and it's too hard to describe why. We just tell our friends they have to do it to understand it. Amy is the first of our friends to try it.  And she's starting to understand it. Read on!

While I was out running today, I think I had an epiphany.

For those of you who don't know, I'm training for my first 5K, which I plan on doing on December 9. I am doing a training program called Zombies, 5K, that is a "couch to 5K" training mixed with zombie chases and an interesting story.

My training today started with a 10 minute warmup, followed by interevals of one minute running, one minute walking, and knee lifts. I was in the middle of the first run, and really miserable. My head was down, I was staring at the ground, gasping for breath, counting the seconds until I could stop running. In fact, I could barely lift my feet up. All I could think was "there's no way I can do this -- there's no way I can go through 5 more weeks of training, and the thought of actually RUNNING a 5K is a joke." And then I started thinking about why I was doing this. Why was I putting myself through this misery?

It's a good question. I've had people assume I was doing this to lose weight. And, while that seems to be a side benefit (as evidenced by my jeans that won't stay on without help), that wasn't my goal. It's not for the physical fitness aspect, either, although that seems to be a prerequisite. At first, I thought I was just doing this because the app was kind of cool, and I figured it would be something to do, but the more I thought about it, that really wasn't it either. And then I realized the real reason I'm out there doing this. I dream about running. Not daydreams, but dreams at night. I regularly dream of running, effortlessly. And it feels GOOD in my dreams. It doesn't hurt, I'm not gasping for air, I'm just running. It feels so good in my dreams, I want that feeling in reality, while I'm awake.

All of this passed through my mind in the time it took me to finish the run, walk for a minute, and do my knee lifts. When it was time to run again, I didn't look down, I raised my head. I didn't count the seconds, I lip-synced to the music that was playing. I didn't grimace in pain and stress, I grinned with joy. And I RAN. At the end of the 60 seconds, yes, I was gasping for air (like always). My muscles screamed at me (like always). But the difference was, I felt good.

My pace was still slow, but I'm okay with that. Approaching it with joy made me realize why there are so many crazy people who do this. I am clearly not built for running. I'm seriously overweight. I've got asthma, and some gnarly arthritis in my knees, but, damn it, I'm going to run.

I'm still not getting those elusive endorphins, though.

Don't worry Amy, the endorphins will come later. :) Run on Girl! 

Where is THAT Girl!! Mayor's Marathon Part 6

I did not see the girl in blue for a long time! I thought I had lost her. I figured to catch her, she would have to take a long break at one of the rest stops or I'd have to hope she went out too fast in the beginning and would gradually run out of steam at the end. As it turned out, she did the latter.

We were at about mile eight and a half when I finally spotted her! She was way ahead of me still. We were on a bike path along the ocean side and going through a beautiful park land. I realized rather quickly, she was slowing down! Woo hoo! Here was my chance!!


I still had to be careful. We were still five miles out. That would be plenty of time for to catch me again if I sped up at this point to pass her and then ran out of steam myself at mile 11. She could totally rally and pass me on the finishing stretch if that happened. 


So instead of passing her now. I vowed to keep her in sight and follow behind. Then I would over take her in the last half mile and come in ahead of her. 


That was the plan. 


But as I followed behind, she kept slowing. I realized I was going to have to pass her. Which is ok as long as she doesn't rally. So the pressure was back on to stay in front of her. 


As I passed, I gave a little greeting about how nice the weather was. She turned to look at me and I was stunned!! This was the first time I really saw her face and she was just so pretty!!! Her eyes were so big and blue and her perky ponytail was just bouncing behind her. She smiled back at me and I melted at the sweetness like sugar in the rain! Such a totally barbie cutie! 


I must come in before now! My ego demanded it! (Ego is such a b/tch!)


So I pumped my arms and kept pressing forward hoping my steam would hold out!  

Hi. My Name is Jill and I’m a Big Girl Athlete

I’ve posted before that I haven’t considered myself an athlete for most of my life. Mostly, because of my body size. I don’t look like an athlete. But there’s no denying that I am. 

My trainer mentioned the other day that a friend of hers (who happens to be a big girl) gets frustrated when people act surprised that she’s an athlete. I see where she’s coming from. I mean, you don’t have to be tall and skinny to be an athlete. I can totally understand someone getting frustrated that someone assumes they’re not an athlete because of their size. Don’t judge a book by its cover. (You should read me first. I have a great plot line; and a surprise ending!) 

But I happen to enjoy watching the surprise on peoples’ faces when they find out I run marathons. It kind of fun to watch the expressions pass over their face as they: size me up, try to decide if I’m joking. Then the eye brow raise when they realize I’m not, followed by the smile of awe that a big girl can run marathons. 

I like breaking people’s stereotypes. But even more, I like being an example of what people can do. After they say, “Wow.” I say, “Yeah, I love it. So what do you like to do?”

Rarely, do I get the answer of, “I run too.” Or any activity for that matter. I do sometimes get, “Well, I wanted to start running  but....” But I find it odd that I don’t know a lot of people who have a passion for an activity. 

Why do I care? I don’t care so much what people do with their time. But when you have a passion for something, you don’t want others to miss out on the joy you experience. You know what I mean? Like, if you are really into stamp collecting, then you want others to know how fun it is because you are sure they’ll enjoy it as much as you do. 

Of course, not everyone will enjoy stamp collecting. But it’s hard to understand that when you are a hard-core philatelist. 

So it’s hard for me to understand why other people aren’t into regular activities either. People will tell me they don’t have time, they are too old, too fat, they have kids, etc etc. But I keep thinking if they knew how good it makes you feel and how fun it is, they will make time for it, not worry about their age or weight and they would take their kids with them to enjoy the activity too. 

I know it’s hard to move from a sedentary lifestyle to an active one. But for me, it was just about finding the activity that made me feel good. The trick however, is to give activity a fair chance to hook us. After listening to me expound about the joys of endorphins for about the millionth time, a friend of mine went to a cardio class. He came back and told me, “I don’t know what you are talking about! I sweated for an hour in that damn class and the endorphins never showed up!” 

My husband and I chuckled. Endorphins usually don’t show up the first day. The first day your body is just trying to survive this new assault on its status quo. It doesn’t know what is happening or what to do about it. It’s not until you repeat this process several times that the body realizes you are going to keep doing this crazy thing. So it better do something about it. That’s when it starts pumping out the endorphins. That’s when you get hooked. 

It’s like budging a boulder downhill. It takes a lot of effort at first. But once you get it rolling, there’s no stopping it! 

So go out, try something. Give it a good push!