The Beginnings of 5K

I always used to hear people say that life can turn around for the better in an instant.  You hear something like that, it goes through several synapses in your mind, and then (if you were like me a year ago) you quickly discard this phrase in the good-for-them-but-that-would-never-happen-for-me pile and go on painfully plodding down your current path.  At this point in your life, you really want to make a change but you don't know how you would ever drag yourself out of your current circumstances, whatever they might be.  You feel defeated before you start.  So you just don't ever start and the situation grows worse. That was me this time last year.  And I am here to tell you that I know for a fact that life can turn around for the better before you even know what has happened.  Sometimes that change is instantaneous, like those random lucky convenient store customers who find themselves instant millionaires due to the purchase of the right lottery ticket.  For me, turning my life around has taken literal blood, sweat, and tears, but even after nearly 365 days of this journey, I am surprised every day by new little victories.

Last September I weighed almost 100 pounds more than I do now.  I was sedentary.  I ate all the wrong things.  I avoided the gym like the plague.  My left knee always hurt and it was sad how short of a walk would make me out of breathe.  I knew that my Transformation program was about to start but I really had no hope at all of being successful.  Jeff and Marisa met with us and told us that starting out they wanted us to work out twice a week.  I sat there and nodded my head, but inside the logistics of even two workouts a week was staggering to me.   I didn't have any gym clothes, no gym bag, I had no clue where my tennis shoes were... I thought, How am I going to fit this into my lunch hour?  My knee is never going to let me do this. I can't do this. How am I going to do this?  The answer to all of those questions was simply to put on my shoes and start. Now I workout five to six days a week and I've worn out three pairs of shoes so far.

By no means has it been easy.  At my first workout with Jeff, as I stood up and sat down over and over again (aka, one of the only things I could do) I told him that one of my goals was to be able to run.  As I said these words, I thought to myself that I might as well have been wishing to win the lottery because that's how good the odds were.   But like I said, life can change before you even know what's happened and today, almost a year later, I started training for our work's annual 5K in December.  My calves sure are hurting from running but I cut my time for a mile in half from when we did the President's Physical Fitness challenge in June.

Crazy things can happen even when you think there is no way possible for them to... Marisa says next year I'll be running a marathon with her.  I laughed when she said that, but stranger things have certainly happened.  If I can be successful at this, anybody can. Just put on your shoes and start.