From couch to 13.1

Six months after Brandon was born, I started working as a diabetes care manager.  Every Monday and Wednesday, I would tell people to exercise “most days out of the week, at least 30 minutes per day,” while “donating” my annual fee as my gym membership year after year.  I’d gotten the membership the year I got married, 2001, and had gone with my dad before the wedding, and while in residency with Tracy, but since being back in the bay area, I’d only gone a few times, sporadically, and then not at all around the time of being pregnant with Brandon.  I’d made more of an attempt after he was born, but still, not a regular at all.  Then after being pregnant with Peyton and with the two kids, I was back to donation status.  If I continued to pay, it was only $99 per year, which sounds great if you go regularly.  If I didn’t pay, I’d have to start all over again, with a hefty initial enrollment or much higher annual or monthly fee.  So I continued to pay, not wanting the initial investment to go to waste.  I’d relish the time of being on the couch, watching TV, eating “whatever” was around with Dave, who is constantly snacking after dinner.  It was like a reward for successfully completing a day’s work.  This became even more evident after one, and then two kids rolled around.  Nighttime was our time; we watched TV, whatever we wanted, and we ate whatever we wanted.  We didn’t have kids asking for food, asking for toys, asking for anything!  But we were totally lazy.
Our work constantly has promotions to be healthy, offering small incentives such as work-branded work out gear just for walking and going some sort of physical activity and recording it.  Right after Peyton was one, in 2010, I decided it was time to get back out to the gym.  I wanted to get the most bang out of my time in the gym, and since I’m not coordinated, that ruled out Zumba, kickboxing, and other aerobic-routine type things.  I always thought of runners being physically fit and wanted leaner legs.  Walking was great, but it seemed to take too long to get calories burnt.  So I started to run.  Slowly.  I’d never been a runner. In high school, we had to run twice per week, 10 laps each day, in 45 minutes. I’d struggled and hated each minute of it.  It used to take me almost the entire period to run those 10 laps.  I’d hate our gym teacher who’d call out our names and tell us to hustle.  I’d resent her because she was rather overweight, and just sat there with a clipboard telling us what to do.  I probably even told her in my mind or under my breath, “Come out here and do this then!”  So, that was my running background.  When I first started, I couldn’t run even a mile.  I purposely went on Mondays and Wednesdays at night, as those were my diabetes days.  I felt like less of a hypocrite if I ran at least on those days, telling my patients to get out there and exercise.  I started at a light jog, and when I got tired, I’d go back to walking.  I’d go for at least 30 minutes, then go back home.  The first day I’d done this, I remember being so sore, I couldn’t walk down the stairs without being in pain.  I wondered why I did this to myself, especially having to wrangle the kids for school the next morning.  Eventually, the soreness went away, and it motivated me to not want to ever want to be that sore after 30 minutes of exercise again.  Later, I would be able to jog for a longer interval between having to stop and walk.  I also went on Fridays, when the kids were in school and I had my days off.  I felt like I should make the most use of the Friday, without kids.  I always found that the days were harder to run because I’d mentally have a list of things I could be doing while the kids were in school.  On the weeknights, I’d already taken care of everything, and Dave was at home with the kids, so I worried less and could just concentrate on being there in the moment.  Also, it seems the TV is better at night, as I’ve found that watching sporting events was more motivational than watching Judge Judy.  Slowly but surely, the distance increased, and I was able to run more in the same amount of time.  In 2010, around April, I saw an email from work for a lottery to win an entry to the Nike Women’s half marathon. Initial results were promising — lab animals lost weight after nichestlouis.com levitra samples taking hoodia. The event also aims for educating public about the issue and should be aware about the disorder so that they can plentiful blood pfizer viagra in required part. As it is said not everything is said to be good and not always things goes right in a person s life similarly due to some issues a on line viagra person definitely faces some problems. Boundaries are not for limiting your love, but these are for maintaining the peace my storefront cialis 10 mg of relationship. I submitted my name, and had butterflies around the time of the drawing, knowing what it would mean to actually get selected.  Sadly, I was not.  I was actually somewhat relieved.  But that started the quest for me to enter a race.  Later in the summer, I’d found out a co-worker, who is a seasoned runner, was signed up for the turkey trot locally.  She was recruiting others of us to join her, and Theresa and I were suckered into doing it.  I remember messaging Theresa at the time, trying to commit to signing up for the race.  We both agreed, in a solidarity effort, and chose the 10K, bypassing the 5K, for our first race.  We knew we both could do the 5K, but wanted the challenge of a 10k, which was definitely going to be a challenge for us.  When I hit “submit” on the online race form, I recall being a bit queasy.  This also motivated me to want to run more to not look foolish at this race.  Granted, I’d had several months to get in gear, but that was the time I needed to get in gear for the race.  The race was on Thanksgiving day, early in the morning.  Four of us from work met up that morning.  Theresa’s cousin, Peter, was also there to run.  He’d registered last minute, but was in shape enough to be able to handle the 10K.  We’d all had a good time, and all finished within a few minutes of each other, with the exception of Tina, who’d outrun us by many minutes.
Now, it was 2011.  I was looking for another race. Now that we conquered the 10K, the next race that we signed up in January for was the 100th running of the Bay to Breakers later in May.   We lost one of our coworkers, but we gained Dave!  We did this on May 15th, 2011.  I think by this time, I was running one of the weekend days now, making it up to 4 times per week that I was getting out there to exercise.    I had tried again in 2011 to get into the Nike race, but again, lost out.  I had tried as a team member, with Tina, but to no avail.  Again, I was nervous to hear about the results, and also tried the work entry, but neither worked.  I had also wanted to try the Disneyland 1/2, but the timing wasn’t right.  That’s when Tina and I found the Tinkerbell race.  I signed up for that in April, so I’d had time to think about this for our Bay to Breakers race, which was 12K, or 7.46 miles.  I was rationalizing that we had to walk a bit at the start, and then after the race, so maybe we ran/walked over 8 miles that day.  What was another 5 miles for the half, right?  Wrong.  I was still so far off from making that goal.  After having completed the May race, I had a lot of time before the race in January.  I’d found another friend at work who was just starting to train for her first half in October.  Just talking to her motivated me to get myself in gear.  At about this time, in the fall, we had another challenge at work.  We’d started walking during our lunches on Mondays and Wednesdays, so that prompted me to change Tuesdays and Thursdays to my running days, in addition the Fridays and one additional day on the weekend.  That made it 6 days out of the week that I was putting effort into some sort of exercise.  This is in addition to just the general chasing around of the kids on a daily basis.  I’d also been running on our vacation in September, in addition to the daily excursions we took.  After seeing my friend complete her 1/2 in October, she offered her training schedule to me in November.  It was difficult to stay on top of the schedule, which allowed for one day a week of inactivity – on Fridays!  I actually would change this around somewhat depending on my schedule for that day, but I tried to observe it for the most part, usually at night.  The longer runs happened on the weekends, but this was interrupted by vacations.  Surprisingly, it’s easier to exercise during our normal school routine versus being off on vacation, especially being with the kids on vacation.  So having the race in January, after being away for two weeks in December, was a bit difficult, but so was the thought of running 13.1 miles without training, so I quickly got back in gear.  It was such a routine that the kids would say, “Are you going running?” each night I was dressed in my exercise clothes.  Adrenaline definitely helps keep things moving, as does slowly working in more miles over the course of many weeks.  I think I may be hooked, as I’m looking for another race to run, want to improve upon my time, and I’m still gunning for that silver pendant from Tiffany.  Tonight, as I was tucking her in for bed, Peyton asked me, “Are you going running?”  I was happy to tell her that I was not (I’m going to enjoy a cupcake), but I did tell her that I was going to go again on Wednesday.  Thanks to all of those who have been there to give words of encouragement, some of whom may not even know that their interest or words were inspirational.  Most of all, thanks to Dave without whom I could not have done this at all.  He’s been very supportive and often lends words of encouragement such as “Hurry up and go already!” or “If you’re not going to go running, then I’m going to go.”  🙂