Progress Pictures

A couple of weeks ago, the gals over at http://www.sisterskinny.com/ posed the challenge for people who are trying to get fit to post pictures of progress. Never one to run away from a challenge (yeah, right!), here goes:

This first one is October 2006 and that is a 5-month-old I'm holding. For me, the arms and the face tell it all. I like to call this the "sloppy mommy" photo. I still have that blue t-shirt. I'm totally throwing it away. Katie at Sister Skinny joked that we've all got mommy-holding-baby-while-wearing-a-sloppy t-shirt photos. We are actually sitting on a train at the St. Louis zoo, so that's why the scenery is blurry.

This is me a year and two months later, happier and healthier. It's about six months after starting to run. (It's Christmas, thus the gifts and video camera.)

It's funny---- I went to the gym for YEARS and never broke a sweat. I remember the day it changed in June 2007. I was walking down the hallway at the Y with my friend Kelly, and we stopped to read a bulletin board that announced the Let Freedom Run 5K in October. I had never run any distance, but I thought, "Hey, by October surely I can run 3 miles." (Actually, it was probably more like, "I wonder how far 5 kilometers is?")

I was finally ready to stop playing around at the gym (more socializing than sweating) and felt up to a challenge. I started out and could barely run 1/2 mile, and that was with major wheezing. I learned what it felt like to sweat--a lot. Six weeks later, I signed up for a "practice race" 5K just to see if I could do it. I did it. It was hard and it hurt, but since that race, there's been no turning back. For the longest time, I couldn't fathom even wanting to run 13.1. (Some days I still can't.) But most days it seems within my grasp.

Progress is good.