I have never considered myself to be very athletic. As a child and through high school, I took dance classes (ballet, tap and jazz) and I even made it to performing a solo as the Sugar Plum Fairy in the Nutcracker my senior year of high school.
I did marching band, which most people don't consider a sport per se, but it did involve being outside (sunburn!) and practicing outside in the heat (passing out from dehydration!) and competing against other bands (trophies!), so it's kind of like a sport.
However, I have always hated to run. P.E. classes, to me, were a unique form of torture. I never managed to get through the mile run without walking about half of it, until one time in 10th grade when I decided to push myself and see if I could run the whole four laps without stopping. I pulled in at 8:05, surprising my teacher (who always thought I was just lazy), and then sat down and almost immediately passed out, landing myself in the school nurse's office.
It was almost a yearly tradition that I passed out at least once during marching band practice, from heat exhaustion or dehydration. Once I got hit in the head with a bass drum during a water break. Only once did this happen in college, after a particularly brutal practice in the heat with not enough water. An ambulance came but I refused to go with them because I was embarrassed. I insisted I was fine and they finally let me go back to my dorm.
After college, my exercise routine consisted of walking from my room to the fridge or tv, from my apartment to my car, from my car to work, and really not much else. And I ate whatever I felt like. I think I spent an entire summer having cheesy eggs and bacon for breakfast nearly every day. After several years of this lifestyle, I finally had a doctor tell me that my cholesterol was dangerously high.
I started small. Eat a salad sometimes. Try to have some veggies in the house. Maybe not have bacon EVERY day of the week. I thought about buying 1% milk instead of my usual 2%. I joined a gym with my mom for a couple of months, and went to zumba classes once a week with her. This was by far the most fun I'd ever had working out, and it was a nice activity to do with my mom (who, admittedly, is in way better shape than I've ever been despite being much older than me). I quit when I moved and couldn't afford a gym membership, but I did miss that.
When I got hired at my current job, they told me that one of the benefits was free access to the gym on campus. I went a couple times, but didn't really know what to do there. I walked on the treadmill. I tried a few of the weight machines. I got frustrated that I wasn't magically dropping pounds left and right from my half-@$$ed attempts at being healthier.
Joey and I had talked about trying to get healthier, and when he joined a gym in the hopes of training for the Tough Mudder event (see his post, "Something is Wrong with Me, Part 1" to hear that story) I was trying to really buckle down on this whole "going to the gym" thing. I started going a few times a week, and decided one day to see if I could still run a mile. I hadn't attempted this since tenth grade, and wondered if I would be able to do it.
What people think they look like when they run:
What I actually look like when I run:
Finally, one day at the gym when I couldn't stand the thought of stepping on that treadmill one more time, I noticed that they had some student-led group fitness classes and decided to give their version of zumba a try. It was fun, but not as high-impact and fun as the professionally taught classes at Gold's Gym had been. I went to a few of these, and did my usual run and weight-lifting workouts on the days off.
Joey and I decided one day to make a deal. I had been getting frustrated with my lack of progress at the gym and getting bored with my usual routine. Joey challenged me to see if I could go to the gym *every* workday between that day and the move (March 1st to April 26th). The time limit on the goal made it seem attainable, but I had never spent so much time at the gym. The first few weeks were the worst, but once I started going it became routine and I actually looked forward to it.
I always went right after work, since the gym was on campus and I was highly unlikely to come back to work out (a 20-minute drive) after going home for the day from work. So almost every afternoon, I was at the gym at 4:45-5pm. I started looking at what fitness classes happened to be offered at 5:00 each day, as I was highly bored with running by this time. One day the front desk girl suggested I try out cycling, which was offered on Tuesdays at that time. I assumed I would hate it, as I have never been any good at bike riding, but was bored enough to give it a try and quickly fell in love. By the end of the semester I had gotten to personally know the instructor and several of the regular students - we had a group of about six who came every week, and we started to get to know one another by chatting about our lives during our cycling time. The people in the class, the fun music and the adrenaline made this an activity I looked forward to each week, and was sorry to miss when I had to work late or wasn't feeling well.
Between moving and then Joey's cancer diagnosis, I stopped working out entirely for the past six weeks. I was too emotionally exhausted, too busy with the move, and then I was sick for awhile. Spring semester ended, and with it the fitness classes. I felt a little bad about it, but after all I had mostly completed my goal. I had worked out regularly for two full months, and had even started to lose a little weight and feel a bit stronger. I intended to go back once things settled down a bit.
This was around the time I heard about the 5K charity race coming up in July. It will be held at the Waynesboro Extravaganza, a yearly tradition of crafts, music and fireworks which I have attended with Joey's family almost every year since we became friends. We usually just watch the fireworks from his family's front yard, but it is a fun tradition and I was looking forward to going this year. Well, it turns out they are having a 5K to raise money for the Augusta Cancer Center Bridge Fund, which happens to be the fund which is directly paying for all of Joey's cancer treatments. Next thing you know I was filling out a sign-up form and turning in my registration fee.
I'm going to run a 5K, which comes out to 3.1 miles (I looked it up). I started going to the gym again last Wednesday, and am now formulating a training plan for how to accomplish this. Yesterday, I walked exactly 3.1 miles on the treadmill (just walked), and clocked in at 54 minutes, so that is my baseline from which to improve. I will work up to running at least half of that, and I will be asking my friends and family to donate to the fund on my behalf to help raise money for this wonderful charity, to help Joey and others like him who can't afford their cancer treatments. You can find the event page here: http://www.runthevalley.com/summer-extravaganza/. I will find more information on how to make donations and post that here as well.
Well, that is all for now. I'll let everyone know how the training is going. Who would have thought I would ever be running in a 5K race? But it's for the best cause I can think of, and it not only gives me motivation to get back in the gym and get back to working out, getting in shape and hopefully continuing to bring down my cholesterol numbers, but it also helps me to feel like I am directly helping Joey in a way that not everyone would or could. I am doing something that will help pay for his treatments, and all it takes from me is a few months of hard work and dedication and physical torture (haha) - what else could I possibly hope to do in this situation?
Wish me luck! Leave your comments below and I will post a link if any of you would like to donate to the charity fund :)
P.S. Please check out the new imgur post I've created for Joey, to introduce a wider community to his story and blog: http://imgur.com/gallery/KgHJp. Please take a look, follow the link at the bottom to his blog if you have not done so already, and click the 'like' button on the bottom. If he can reach 300 likes, this post will make it to the front page where everyone on imgur can see it and generate more traffic to his blog, so more people can share his story! You will need to create an account with an email address to be able to 'upvote', but I promise it's a legitimate site and won't be sending you spam or asking you to pay anything. Thank you for helping me to promote this cause and story, dear friends. I love you all for being here with me. <3
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