This is what I look like right now. I am 5'2'' and weigh 150 pounds.
I have very few memories before I started hating my body. My mother and grandmother put me on my first diet (consisting of being allowed only to snack on carrots and celery) when I was in kindergarten. I remember going from not being aware of bodies to being hyper aware of how people looked. I realized that my grandmother (a devotee of Weight Watchers at the time) had a bit of a gut too. She did not appreciate me telling her so.
Shortly after starting the 2nd grade, other children started noticing my body too, and this began the first of many years of being teased for my size. The gym teacher I had was particularly cruel, singling me out as an example of non-fitness, and making me smell my own shoes when she smelled something off about someone in the class. (It wasn't me, but everyone loves to blame the fat person).
I started my own dieting in earnest in the 8th grade. It turns out that I was really good at it at first, and the more success I had in losing weight, the better people liked me, the better my life got, and so the harder I tried at dieting. At some point, it got unsustainable. I would wake up at 4 or 5 in the morning, and workout until 7, and then eat my one meal of the day (grape nuts cereal). I obsessed over drinking tons of water, and was often passing out from hunger and probably borderline hyponatrenia.
When I went to college, I decided I wanted to get better. I went to a college out of my home state, and because no one knew that I was a food freak, decided to eat like all of the other college freshmen. I went from 100-150 pounds that year.
Unhappy about my size, I started running even though I hated it as a kid (recall evil gym teacher). After my first 4-mile walk-jog, I was so proud that I could go that distance that I made the goal for myself to run the LA marathon, which I did in 2002. I was so incredibly proud after the race. I went around campus, looking at all of the size 0 women and thought that they might be smaller than me, but my body could do things theirs could not.
Since then, I've run 7 more marathons and a few ultra-marathons. I am particularly proud of finishing the North Face Endurance Challenge in 2012 in heavy rain, after I had failed to run 50 miles two other times before.
But my weight has crept back up, and I've not been great about dealing with it. I oscillate back and forth between ultra-strict diets and gorging on everything in sight. So, as I said, I'm ready to grow up. My goals for my life, and for this blog, out for the world to know are:
1. I want to achieve my dream of qualifying for the Boston Marathon this year.
I went to grad school in the Boston area, and ran the Boston Marathon for charity in 2008. Each of the years I lived in Boston, I watched the marathon, and it was a big deal in my life. In fact, even though I was living in California at the time of the bombings last year, once the news hit, I was bombed with text messages from friends who didn't know that I wasn't there! I want to be back, and to run to show the world that Boston is Strong, and that I am strong.
2. Qualify for Western States
Although I am technically an ultramarathoner (because I have completed races longer than 26.2 miles), I don't feel like a full member of the tribe. Western States is considered to be one of the most famous (if not prestigious race) in the ultramarathon community. What do I have to do to get there? Either finish a 100 mile run, or a 100k race (about 62 miles) in under 16 hours. In other words, I need to be able to finish a race twice as long as the longest run I have ever done.
These are big and audacious goals. My current marathon PR is 4:41:xx, so I need to take off at least 1 hour and 6 minutes to qualify for Boston. In other words, I need to improve by about 25%. I feel like this is the right move for me because I get the most inspired by my wildest dreams, such as finishing that first marathon, or going to graduate school at a little tech school in Cambridge. I'm keeping this blog both as a record of my journey, and as a means of accountability to myself. If I get any readers, I hope to be an inspiration.
So let's light 'em up!
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