10 miles.

That is a lot of miles.  It’s what I ran today.

Yup, you heard right.  I ran 10 miles today, this morning, not in my dreams, real foot to pavement running.

What ever possessed me to run 10 miles (much less 1 mile) you ask?  That’s a good question.  I still sometimes ask myself that.

To make a long story short, I had a beautiful daughter more than 2 years ago and her gift to me when she was born was what I like to call “baby love”.  She loved me so much she gave me a nice 15 lbs of jiggle so I would forever remember our special bond.  A simple card would have been enough.  In the two years since, I lost 5 lbs, gained 14 and weighed almost as much as I did when I was full term with Velda.  I was disgusted with myself and finally had the courage to say enough is enough.  (That was a hard one to do.)  I confessed to my husband and thus began this 8 month journey.

Believe me, I did not start out running miles much less running at all.  Ha!  I began walking 30 minutes 2 to 3 times a week.  Then Juan suggested running 30 seconds every 5 minutes for half an hour.  Yup, I was that lady you saw on the street about to have a heart attack after 30 seconds of running!  Fast forward 5 months later and it looked more like running 5 minutes, then walking 1 minute for half an hour 4 days a week.  (Am I boring you with all these figures?  To bad, deal with it.)  My first full run was January 2nd.  I ran 3 miles.  I thought I was going to croak; obviously I survived.  And today: 10 miles.

It’s a big deal to me what I have accomplished and all I’m trying to say is that it took a long time and some pushing through moments of ‘I hate this’, ‘I don’t want to run’, ‘I’m tired’, ‘I’m sick’, ‘It’s that time of month, don’t I get a break’, (oops, too much?) and ‘I hate this’.  Did I already say that one?

I have to admit, sometimes I want to cry while I run.  Not because I’m sad, hurt or in pain, but because I can not believe what I am doing, what I am accomplishing.  To be self disciplined and push on towards this goal of mine.  To see where I have come over the past months and know I don’t have to settle for what was.  It seems like heavy stuff for just running, but if you’ve ever dealt with not just weight issues like “oh, I’m fat” but with self hatred really.  To look in the mirror and be disgusted and annoyed with what you see day after day and then finally decide to make a change.  That decision: sounds so very easy yet is so very hard to do.  With the help and support of my little family, I wake up every day knowing I can make this good decision and they will back me up.

I can’t do this alone.