Fat Chick Jogging

It has been forever and ever since I blogged.  Facebook lured me with its siren song and I do not know if I will be more consistent with my new blog.  I hope so.

So much has changed in my life in the last few years.  Some things remain the same.  I love my family, but I am not always good at showing it physically.  I do a lot for them, so hopefully my kids know they have a loving mom who just happens to be cranky sometimes.  Maybe I need a hat that says, "The Crab is In," on those grouchy days.

I love to laugh.  My sense of humor is earthy. Some might say it is uncouth.  At least that's what my ex-sister in law would say.  But that's okay.  She's a bitch.  So who cares what she thinks.

We have finished with a lot of the autism therapies we used to have for my son.  There is no more ABA.  There are no more "how to make friends" classes.  There is no more physical therapy.  We do go to speech therapy once a week.  I homeschool my son.  When we do social things, I take him to gatherings where the other children accept him.  He does best with children much younger.  Kids his own age will look eager to play with him, but quickly drift away when he opens his mouth.  It is heartbreaking and I don't know if it will ever change.  However, he is happy.   He is healthy.  So I do count my blessings.  I continue to have hope for his future that one day there will be that one special friend who does everything with him, a friend who shares his interests and doesn't find him odd.  Some day...

My youngest daughter is almost fourteen.  She is in public school and gets great grades, except for in PE, where she gets C's.  My husband says he doesn't care about P.E.  I think people who were good in sports and loved P.E. will never understand what a painful thing it was for those of us who weren't good, and who were always picked last to be on the team.  Then our team yelled at us because we sucked.  I actually have really horrible memories of high school P.E.  It is too bad, because exercise is so important.  It took me until now to find something I really loved, which is jogging.  I'm not the fastest but I am faster than I used to be.  One thing my youngest excels at is band.  She plays the alto sax and she is really good.  She will be doing it throughout high school, which she just happens to enter next fall.  Yikes!

My oldest daughter is twenty-two.  She is married, living in Vegas, and making house payments.  She gave birth to my first grandchild, a girl, in January.  My granddaughter is, of course, the most gorgeous baby in the whole wide world.  She is bunches of sweet. I wish they lived closer, but California is not an affordable place to live.  We are thinking of leaving the state ourselves.  Sometimes we even bat back and forth the idea of leaving the country and moving to Canada.  Would Canada want us?  I don't know.

This blog is going to be about my life and about jogging.  Let me tell you about my jogging journey.  I started adding on to my occasional and infrequent two mile jogs at the end of February 2012.  I worked my way up to a half marathon and finished just shy of three hours.  My body was messed up for quite some time.  I could barely walk for three days.

Three to four months later, I finished my second half marathon.  It was amazing.  I made a much better time and only hurt for about a week.  It wasn't as painful as after my first half, thank goodness. 

In October, I entered a competition with a team and did a seven-mile leg in a marathon.  I felt guilty passing people who were doing the whole 26 miles on my fresh legs.  Next time I'm in a marathon, I want to run the whole thing.

I have been struggling lately with asthma and putting off workouts, but now I have a new goal to work toward.  A friend is letting me run a leg in the Hood to Coast race in Oregon in late August.  I think my total run will be about 17 miles.  It will be in three different segments.  So I have some motivation to practice now.  I can't let my team down.  Did I mention most of the run is uphill?  Good thing I live in an area with lots of hills to practice on.

I started out at 210 pounds, went down to 190 and am now back up to 196.  I ran thirteen minute miles when I started.  Now I run about elevens.  On a good day, I can do a 10:30.  I would like to lose some weight to see if it will help my run times.  But if I don't, I am still a healthy, big girl.

My weight is definitely part of who I am, just like my eye color is part of who I am.  It is not all of who I am.  I am a mother, a spouse and a friend.  I also happen to be overweight.  Many people think overweight people are lazy.  We are not.  There are tons of us out there exercising.  We are moving our bodies and feeling good about it.  We might not look like super models, but that's okay.  I'm not giving up my chocolate to fit society's idea of how I should look.  I am earning my chocolate with five mile runs, or jogs, whatever you want to call them.  And that's okay.

I hope this blog will be fun and sometimes funny, but I had to get my introduction out of the way.  Welcome, and I hope you enjoy visiting.