Did you look outside today? If you’re from the Seattle area, you know that we had an unseasonably warm day today. In fact, as we were headed down the street in our turtle necks, scarves and vests on this lovely 70 degree day, we started to kind of feel silly… But how else are you supposed to dress for an autumnal harvest festival among friends???
But I digress. I’m giving a holla because today I did something that has been looming menacingly in front of me ever since I became a runner: I ran to St. Edward Park and back. It wasn’t a terribly far distance- just under 5 miles- but the hills terrify me. St. Edward Park is located in a fairly hilly area and, before I started considering exercise a thing in my life, I just wondered how all those crazy people were climbing up and down those hills. I would watch people riding their bikes down to the park and I would silently warn them in my head of the job in front of them: if you go down, you have to come back up… So the distance is not so hard, in my mind, it was the altitude that had scared me all those years ago.
I needn’t have worried. It was a lovely run. I promised myself that I only had to run there- I could walk back. When I reached our agree upon stop point, I took my heart rate and found out I was at 178 BPM, so I took a little walking break to calm it down, but I managed to run, pretty much, all the way home, too. It was a really proud accomplishment for me. Next time I want to run down to the water’s edge too! It felt wonderful to beat that big, scary challenge, and even better to go a different route, to see different things, the colors of autumn… What a great run!
To top things off, when I checked in on my WiiFit today, I found out that at 202 I am NO LONGER OBESE!!!!. I’m simply ‘overweight’ now! I’ve been clinically obese for 20 years. I never expected to not be obese- the nastiest, grossest word ever: obese. I hate that word. It’s like ‘panties’ or ‘moist’- just one of those words that gives you the hoovery-cooveries. Anyways, it is incredibly freeing to be out of the obese category. I burst into tears, as I am wont to do, and spent a moment celebrating in shock.
“Hey, I’m Tamara. Guess what, I’m no longer obese.”
Weird.
In a good way. 🙂