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| Freep in Vancouver, BC |
"You're tough. So is Detroit."
So are you running the Detroit Free Press Marathon international 13.1 or 26.2 or what? Registration for international events ends tonight at 11:59 pm. HAPPYLEGS for 10% off registration for all events. In one last ditch attempt to convince you of how cool it is, I'll share another portion of my running story.
I ran in high school. I guess, in retrospect, I was pretty good, but mentally, I was weak. I let an injury turn into an excuse. I didn't run at ALL my senior year. I didn't run my first year of college until I had a serious breakup and felt like I was putting on too much weight and needed to run to get away from it all. I ran sporadically through college. Sometimes I'd take a year off or more at a time. Sometimes I'd train really hard. When I was working two jobs and doing my masters degree, I didn't run for almost three years. Finally, towards the end of the summer of 2013, I was at least 20 pounds overweight. Jason and I went on a cruise and I threw a major tantrum towards the end because I couldn't find a damn thing to wear to dinner. I literally threw shit and screamed.
That's when I FINALLY got it. It took 15 years from the time I first started running to actually feel like I was a REAL runner and like I was committed. For 5 months I did it on my own. Thankfully, I sort of new what I was doing because of my HS experience. Then, for some unknown reason, I signed up for my first Freep half marathon. I still have NO idea what made me think I could run a half marathon when the furthest I'd raced was a 5k. When I signed up for the Freep, I finally started using Run Coach. Best choice I ever made. It didn't matter that I was so much slower than when I was in HS. I finally felt like running was a PART of me and not something I was just doing to loose weight or get over a guy. I can't tell you why.
I share this with you because NOW I'm happy. Happy with my weight, happy in my relationships, happy with my running, and even FAST! But I wasn't always. Not by a long shot. It took a LOT of false starts. But I can easily say that the Detroit Free Press Marathon played a HUGE part in the story that is now my life as a runner. #happylegshappyheart
