Thursday, December 15, 2011

Inspired

I was catching up on The Biggest Loser last night while I started wrapping the huge stack of Christmas presents piled up in my living room. I merrily placed presents in gift bags and pre-decorated gift boxes (I am a notoriously bad gift wrapper, but I make up for it by being an excellent gift giver) while I choked back tears brought on by the inspirational hard work and triumphs of the Biggest Loser contestants. I'll save a long diatribe about why I love this show so much for another time, but as I watched these contestants, who five months earlier were quite literally killing themselves with food, run a full marathon, I felt inspired to push myself out of my own comfort zone.

Earlier this week, while doing a short run at lunch, my running buddy Erin mentioned a 10k that she and another friend we run with were planning on running in February in San Francisco. Well, I had a lot of excuses. February is too soon, too cold, it's too much of a hassle to go to a race down in the city, blah blah blah. Then, I watched the Biggest Loser contestants run their marathon. In addition to being relatively new to this whole working out thing, which is hard enough, the evil Biggest Loser producers made them run this marathon on a dry lake bed in the middle of the desert and about half of it was on dirt roads. There was nothing to look at, they didn't have any music and there were periodic dust storms that pelted them with dirt. It looked awful. And they all just plugged away at it. Most of them finished in five hours. Some of the older contestants walked the majority of the time and must have taken about 8 hours.

So my thought process went something like this. That 10k would take me about an hour. That's not bad. The roads would all be paved. That's easy. I would have my friends to talk to, which would keep me motivated. And it would be cold, but at least there wouldn't be any sand storms blowing dirt in my eyes. That seems pretty freaking easy right now.

So, lest I let the moment of motivation pass me by, I texted Erin and told her I was in. I know she will hold me to it! We've both run a couple of 5ks but I never run any further than 3 miles so I need to start adding some mileage to my runs to get in shape for this race. I'm a little nervous but I'm also looking forward to pushing myself and meeting a new personal goal.

Today my workout was drinking hard apple cider while bowling. Not every day is a fit day. Balance, people. Balance.

4 comments:

  1. Bowling is a sport, therefore it is exercise. Also, apple is a fruit and therefore healthy. It counts as a lunchtime workout.

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  2. Agreed! Good thing my bowling score doesn't count towards anything.

    Also, pack your gym bag tomorrow! The Rec Center closes at five and doesn't open again until January 9th!

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