Inspiration Mondays: Registration

What would life be if we had no courage to attempt anything? -Vincent Van Gogh

In 1999, I finished my Bachelor of Education and left for a job in England on the day before my graduation. I thought I was pretty brave then. I've never been afraid to try new things.

Or so I thought.

Back then, I weighed more than 300 pounds. I don't know exactly how much I weighed, because the only scale I would get onto was the one I had at home, and it only went up to 300. And that was that. I knew I was fat. I knew I was unacceptable.

And I knew it was my fault.

When I moved away from home and was forced to make my own food and use public transport in a big, busy, bustling city, the weirdest thing happened:  I lost weight. A lot of weight. All the clothing I brought with me no longer fit.  And I thought I was finished with the weight struggle.

I was wrong about that.

Over the past few months, I've been training a lot... exercise every single day, walking, jogging, strength training, circuits, swimming... and the original goal was to drop some more weight so that I could lower my blood pressure. I thought I'd just drop about twenty pounds and be done with it. And then I looked it up, and I figured that I'd need to drop a lot more than that if I wanted to maintain a healthy body. So, I amped it up, and kept losing more.

And then I had the crazy idea that I'd train for a 10K run in September. Heck, it's good to have goals, right? I thought I'd be at my goal weight by then as well.

So, I've been training for that, and I managed to run about 4K this weekend. Not bad. I was feeling pretty good about the whole thing. Not long before I can really push for 10K.

I was told today that the trail ends uphill, on gravel, no less. I don't know whose dumb idea that was, but they're unlikely to change that anytime soon. Hmm. That's not going to be easy. I briefly considered giving up, that what my well-meaning friends told me was true: that my goals for September were unrealistic. I should settle for a conservative goal so that I wouldn't be disappointed if I didn't reach it. I looked up the registration page for the 10K event and stared at it for a few minutes.

Then, I paged back through my Facebook page and found a video a friend posted this weekend. The following is the extended version:

And so yeah, I'm filling in the form right now. And I'm going to keep on keeping on. And I know that I can't run 10K up a gravel hill right now...

But I will sometime. And that's all that matters. Thanks, y'all. I'm off to Zumba class.