It's Marathon Monday (continued from here)
Last week's Marathon Monday left off with my decision to join Weight Watchers. Now joining Weight Watchers is a story all it's own and I'll share that, too, but today I'm going to concentrate on the running part of my story. So the new year came and I joined Weight Watchers. With my renewed commitment to losing weight and getting healthy, I started running again. Since it had been awhile, I started the Couch to 5K program again. I progressed through the program more quickly and before I knew it, I was calling myself a runner again. And I was happy to be running, so I shared.
I loved sharing my running experience even though, up until this point, I had pretty much been a runner in isolation. I'd share my runs in conversation or on Facebook, but I didn't really know any runners. But sometime in March that started to change. I started meeting other runners. For instance, I remember a chance meeting with an old classmate and she shared some running stories, including her one marathon. Her marathon story included her need to stop and vomit at mile 16 and 20, and all I could think was, "That's crazy. You did this on purpose?"
I also met a couple of runners through Weight Watchers, one of which was just days from completing her first official marathon when we met (although she had already run the distance twice unofficially in her preparation) and another I met just days after she completed her first half marathon. They were both training for the CIM in December. It was fascinating to meet "real" people willing to run 26.2 miles.
When I look back, my decision didn't come from any one of these encounters, but the pieces were starting to fit together that would change everything. Somehow I got from thinking "You ran a marathon? That's nice, but not for me" to "I want to run a marathon!" And I absolutely didn't see it coming. Running a marathon had never crossed my mind. I didn't even know the distance of a marathon. Yet it was my mind and my heart that led me to this huge decision....... [To Be Continued]
I loved sharing my running experience even though, up until this point, I had pretty much been a runner in isolation. I'd share my runs in conversation or on Facebook, but I didn't really know any runners. But sometime in March that started to change. I started meeting other runners. For instance, I remember a chance meeting with an old classmate and she shared some running stories, including her one marathon. Her marathon story included her need to stop and vomit at mile 16 and 20, and all I could think was, "That's crazy. You did this on purpose?"
I also met a couple of runners through Weight Watchers, one of which was just days from completing her first official marathon when we met (although she had already run the distance twice unofficially in her preparation) and another I met just days after she completed her first half marathon. They were both training for the CIM in December. It was fascinating to meet "real" people willing to run 26.2 miles.
When I look back, my decision didn't come from any one of these encounters, but the pieces were starting to fit together that would change everything. Somehow I got from thinking "You ran a marathon? That's nice, but not for me" to "I want to run a marathon!" And I absolutely didn't see it coming. Running a marathon had never crossed my mind. I didn't even know the distance of a marathon. Yet it was my mind and my heart that led me to this huge decision....... [To Be Continued]
Comments