The world has a way of waking me up....

Last week the Man and I were down in Eugene at his folks house for the night. I decided to step on the scale. YIKES! Married life is good to me...Cheese is not as good to me. I made the (really stupid) decision to calculate my BMI and was horrified to find that the CDC thinks I should weigh about 90lbs less than I do! First off Fuck you CDC! I would need BONES removed to weigh under 150lbs! Anyway, as insane as I thought the CDC BMI info was I really had to stop and think about where I was. Was this the way I wanted to treat my body? My one and only body? Was this the body I wanted to be setting as an example for my kids? Was this the body I wanted to grow little people in? The answer was no. This was not the "Me" I wanted. And so....My loving husband signed me up for Weight Watchers here-to-for known as WW.

It has been a week and it is pretty easy. It is almost enjoyable to have a structure to use to control my frankly, out of control eating habits. I found an iPhone application for the point tracker and I am all over planning my meals and snacks and staying within my points for the day. It also helps that I am running distances again which allow me many more activity points that are mine to eat or not eat as I wish. For right now, as long as I am not HUUUUNGRY I am trying not to eat the "extra, extra" points. That's how I think of my activity points. My daily points are 35 my weekly points (first extra in extra, extra) are 35 and that ought to be enough unless I am running mad distance and even then, there are enough filling yummy foods out there that don't cost a zillion points. I think for the first month I am really going to try to stay within the first extra. We will see how it goes and how running a 1/2 marathon in 3 weeks goes along with that.

I realized I have not written much since I started running again. It all started with my sister-in-law running the Portland Marathon 3+weeks ago. The Man and I were all signed to run the full 26.2 until our lives fuggin exploded! I am not even kidding! My internship, his picking up a silly amount of OT to cover our expenses, wedding planning (for a wedding 5 weeks away!), and then our rental agreement was terminated so that the owner could sell it. Sidebar: The house still has not gone up on the market and the owner's car is there all the time now...hmmmm. Serves her right for offering to sell it to us at a leotarded price of 300K+ she is HIIIIIGH! Anyway, this would have been our second move (third rental) in a year. No thanks! We decided to look into buying and thanks to the amazing help and generosity of our families we were able to buy and are now in love with our little 1929 bungalo in the hood! You may be able to see how this was a total and utter train wreck for our marathon training. Well the sister soldiered on and laced up her kicks that rainy bleak morning. It was literally raining swimming pools that morning. I had offered to join her for part of the run and was already cold by the time I met up with her around mile 13. We chatted and ran and she blew me away with her high spirits and glowing zen runner-ness that day. I was having so much fun and was feeling so inspired that my original plan for a 7mile run morphed into a 13 mile run and before I knew it I was hugging her and stepping onto the sidewalk at the 26mile sign. It was a great day and despite being suuuper sore the next day I was suuuper inspired. I started scheming. I ran two days later and then the day after that. The next weekend I volunteered to help with medical assistance at the "Girlfriends Half Marathon" in Vancouver. It was even more inspiring! It was an all women's race and there were women from ALL walks of life. I teared up repeatedly as groups of women clad in pink crossed the finish line hugging, holding hands and weeping tears of accomplishment, pride, joy and pain. It was very moving. At one point I was standing at the finish line keeping an eye peeled for any runners who may not be doing so well when a woman sort of staggered over to the shoe station and started crying as the man cut her timer tag off of her shoe. I could read her name on her race bib and asked "*Janet*, how are you doing?" She turned and looked at me and choked out "I did it! I did the whole thing!". I teared up and as she hugged me I said "Yes you did my friend, yes you did". It has been a while since I ran a race I was truly uncertain I would complete. But I remember those runs. I remember being 17 and being terrified as I laced up my sneakers that this 10 mile, this 17 mile this whole fuggin marathon would be too much for me. For better or worse, I no longer have that groundless doubt anymore. I know pretty well that even if I am crawling, I will make it to the finish line. The difference now is how will I feel about that finish line? Will I feel like I gave it everything in training and then left all I had out there on the course? Will I feel like I half-assed the training and now I am just phoning in the race? Will I feel embarrassed and woefully unprepared? Will I PR and know that my efforts and smarts paid off? Well, this is my journey right now. As the whole house wife thing is a little irritating I am focusing on running and shaving pounds and time off of my running. I have the most wonderful support team from the Man to the women I have been fortunate enough to stumble upon. I have the motivation and the drive to get out there and run...now it is just a matter of putting all of the pieces together. As it was back in the Outward Bound days, first it is about learning the basics of the skill, the hand eye coordination, then it becomes about the craftsmanship...