Four Pounds Down!

Training for a big thing has to be built up of several small things. Like getting on the scale and owning up to the fact that where you had once dropped fifty pounds you've gained thirty of them back. Well I did that last week. I stepped on the scale last night and I am happy to say with three walks and a better diet I've dropped four of those.

I know to a lot of you out there that doesn't seem like much. But to me it means a lot. It gives me the encouragement to keep on keepin on. I've struggled with my weight since I was very young. With a biological father who once asked if it was okay that one of his daughter's was 'big' to a grandmother who wrote my name on the fattest person in a newspaper photograph you could say my weight issues are incredibly deep seated and emotional. When something hurts I reach for my drug of choice--food.

Over the years I've watched many dreams pass me by. I've always loved running and ever since I was ten years old I've watched women run long distances. Like the marathon.

The marathon holds a special mystique for me and I've been trying desperately to get back to it ever since I ran my first and only one, the Walt Disney World Marathon in January of 1999. There's something about the number 26.2. It tests your mettle both physically and mentally. Just when you think you can't take it anymore there's the finish line, calling you, beckoning you, welcoming you to collapse there and know you've done something only twenty-percent of the world's population has ever done before or will ever do.

It's something anyone can do, but not everyone will. I have several doubters out there. And rightfully so. I have signed up for races that I've never run in. And I know that the nature of my condition relegates me to late fall, winter, and early spring marathons. Anyone and everyone can be overcome by the heat, and the medicines I take to cure my madness are paradoxically toxic to my system. To be weaned off of them would be detrimental to my mental health.

But the marathon shines like a beacon of hope. I've done it once. I can do it again. First stop, four more pounds. Three more walks.