Race Update

My goal was to finish the race in 40 minutes or less. My friend, Jaime, and I finished it in 37 minutes 10 seconds. That impressed us, but what impressed us more was that we never stopped running. I was tracking the run on RunKeeper on my phone and we averaged 11 min. 50 sec. per mile. Granted, this time we weren't pushing strollers or anything, which made it a little easier. But we ran almost 2 minutes per mile faster than we've run all week! :)

A Fitness Journey

WARNING: This post contains potentially embarrassing information about me. Read only if you promise not to make fun of me for it. ;)

First, let me get the embarrassing stuff out of the way. Not sure why I'm divulging this...guess I just feel the need to let it all out in the open. :) But the embarrassing stuff is necessary to make my adult fitness journey make sense. So here goes...

Embarrassing Fact #1: I was a chubby kid. Here's what I remember: In 4th grade during the yearly physical fitness test (where you always get weighed), I remember weighing somewhere around 120. Most of the kids my age? Somewhere around 75 or 80, if my memory serves me correctly. Now, I will give myself that I was one of the tallest kids in the class. But still.

#2: I was a chubby teenager. In the 8th grade, I weighed about 160 and wore a woman's size 16. Seriously.

#3: As a kid/teenager, I HATED physical activity! Really hated it. I hated playing outside. I hated being sweaty/dirty. All of it. Hence why I weighed so much. Well, that and the fact that I loved to eat. :)

#4: Because of said hatred for physical activity, I never learned how to swim or ride a bike. Well, it wasn't only for that reason. I didn't learn the bike thing because I was afraid of falling off. I didn't learn the swimming thing because I have this intense fear of drowning and going underwater puts me in severe panic mode. For real.

I think that's enough embarrassing stuff for now. I think it'll help the rest of this post make sense. In my growing up years, I avoided physical activities at all costs. In fact, every year in elementary school when we had to do those physical fitness tests, I failed them MISERABLY. I could not run well worth a flip and I was so bad at it! I mean, that's what kids are supposed to do, right? Run? And yet to do the 1-mile run we were supposed to do, I walked most of it and felt like I was going to die! But I hated that I was one of the biggest kids in my grade. I didn't want to be, and yet I didn't seem to know how to fix it. 

Fast forward to high school. I joined band and the last two weeks of summer vacation were filled with band camp. Outdoors. Exercising pretty much ALL DAY! At first, it was SO difficult! Not to mention that they started our rehearsals with actual exercises, not just marching. We had to do a mile running or walking. Then we did all of these various arm and leg strength training exercises. When I started my freshman year, I was a size 16. After those 2 weeks, I'd dropped an entire size! I didn't change my eating, but by adding in the exercise, the weight just started falling off! The next year, during band camp, I dropped another size and stayed pretty consistent all through high school. So I wasn't one of the skinniest, definitely, but I didn't feel like I stuck out as one of the biggest either. 

Fast forward again to college. Living on campus meant I got quite a bit of exercise just having to walk around from class to class to the cafeteria to the dorm, etc. My freshman year I actually gained back some weight that I had lost that summer before because I was eating in the cafeteria most of the time. But once I got off campus I actually started to improve my fitness levels because the commuter parking lots were REALLY far away from anything! And since I tend to run late, it meant that I was usually booking it to get to class on time! So my junior year of college I decided to start getting into more of a fitness routine. I worked out regularly (and recorded my days that I worked out on my calendar with smiley face stickers!) in addition to having to walk all over campus. I ended up being the smallest I've ever been in my adult life. 

Starting that workout routine in college started me on a fitness journey that I'm still on and will always be on. When thinking about exercise, I had always thought, "I'll have to do this forever???" But once I'd incorporated it for awhile, it wasn't such a big deal. It makes me feel better about myself and it helps me maintain my weight, even when my eating isn't the best it should be. There are times that I don't do good with my workouts and I might go two weeks without doing anything. Luckily, that hasn't happened in awhile. But I can say that I haven't gone probably more than a month in my adult life without working out in some way. And that feels good. It also feels good to meet goals that I as a kid/teenager, I wouldn't have thought I'd be able to do. One of those is running. As you read above, I've never been a good runner. Even at the time of life when you're supposed to be good at it! But as an adult, I hate thinking that there are things that I can't do. I don't want my answer to challenges to be, "I can't do that." So I work on it. I'm not a good runner. Yet. I'm not a fast runner. Heck, I don't even run the entire time! But I try to do better every time.

And thanks to a former school friend/current facebook friend, I now use the RunKeeper app on my phone to track my mileage, average pace, and calories burned. It really helps me make sure I'm being consistent and not moseying along. Because if I can't burn massive calories, I don't really see the point! :) And knowing my average pace helps me compete with myself and try to do better each time.

And so...I'm doing something that my 12 year old self probably wouldn't have thought to ever be possible: I'm doing a 5K! I'm so excited about this!! Probably a little nerdily excited. :) My goal is to walk/run it in 40 minutes. Really, I'd like to do it in less than 40 minutes. I guess I'll find out this Saturday what I'm really capable of. :)