Curses!

I'm out of excuses, really I am. There are officially fewer than 100 days remaining until the MCM 10K (see countdown clock at left) and I have done...nothing. Nothing to prepare.

Yet.

Yeah, 100 days is an arbitrary number, I know, but it's my arbitrary number, and I let it pass without any real attempt at changing my diet and exercise routine. How can I say - yet again - that I'm going to start over? FOR REAL this time. No, really!

~sigh~


Here's the good news: a recent health scare resulted in a whole battery of tests being run on everything from my heart to by gallbladder and I'm actually in good health. Aside from some elevated blood pressure issues (which will undoubtedly improve with exercise - duh!), there's nothing preventing me working out.

Sure, I have a lot less time to train than I'd hoped...but I'm not giving up. I can't. I owe it to myself to keep moving forward. Please wish me luck.

Baby Got Back

So I'm home sick today (still out with may-juh chest pain last night and this morning, although I am feeling a bit better this afternoon) and watching the Law & Order Marathon on whatever-cable-channel. The episode is titled "Fat" and centers around the bullying and beating up of a group of siblings...because they're - you guessed it! - fat.

Two thoughts on this: first, even though I've put on a lot (a lot!) of weight in the last two years, I have not once experienced active discrimination/taunting/commentary on my weight gain or - for people who didn't know me before - current size. This might seem impossible to some, and I'm sure there have been the occasional sales clerk or two who turned the other way, figuring I wouldn't fit into their offerings, but I currently work part time in a clothing store where only a handful of items would fit me. And guess what? I sell women's (and men's) clothes like nobody's business.

So nobody's holding my size against me. Why is this? I'm reminded of how brutal people can be when thinking back on the first time I heard of Saartjie Baartman, aka the "Venus Hottentot," a Khoikhoi woman turned European sideshow "freak" at the turn of the 18th Century. She - like many Khoi women - exhibited steatopygia, resulting in abnormally large large buttocks. As such, she was exhibited naked in public and openly mocked for her unique physique, especially in France.

Now THAT is size discrimination.
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I guess somewhere between Saartjie and I lies the wide continuum of fat jokes, sideways tsk-ing glances, and the realization that the euphemistically named "Women's Deparment" might be the better place to shop. Perhaps the lacking of any real emotional or mental negativity surrounding my weight gain has prevented me from finding the right motivation to really kick-start my weight loss and workout regime.

Does this mean I need a series of insults to send me on my way? Not at all. But I am surely grateful for all of my friends and family who have recognized the change and realized that negativity and belittling do nothing to support a person trying to improve herself. And for that, I say merci.

And I Ran...I Ran So Far Away

So this is really dumb: I'm running a 5K on July 4th. Correction: I'll probably be walking most of it, with a dash of jogging and maybe a sparse sprinkling of actual running. It's kinda amazing. I mean, I signed up for this darn thing over a month ago and...guess what?! That month sure did pass by quickly.

But, I'm going to go and I'm going to stick it out. Have I been "really" training? No. Have I been walking more and more each week, eating better, and lost weight? Yes. Will I be traversing the course with a trained, seasoned athlete who will help me gauge my ability to finish all five K's? Also yes. Which is why I'm going to show up, tough it out (within healthy, reasonable limits), and hopefully use this event at the kick in the butt I need to get serious about the 10K in the fall.

Is this a pretty crazy, slightly not-smart plan. Probably. But like I've said before, I'm not one to live my life without a little extreme behavior now and then. Who know? Maybe I'll end up like Emil Zatopek (above), the only athlete ever to win the 5K, 10K, and Marathon in an Olympics. Only instead of a quadrennial sporting event, my accomplishments might come over the course of a year, or a lifetime.

This Saturday just might be the start of a beautiful thing.

The Thinker

Once upon a time, boys and girls, I was an academic, a scholar. I did such dorky things as edit an encyclopedia, submit research for a Supreme Court amicus curiae brief, and write book reviews for an academic journal.

And then one day I stopped.

I left graduate school with all of my coursework completed but with no degree. I never completed my thesis paper. Oh sure, I could make eleventeen excuses: the topic became irrelevant, my advisers were unprepared to lead me through the process, I was sick for a while, I moved, blah, blah, blah. But really it's all on me. Yep...I just have never found the motivation to complete it.

That's not to say that I don't want to finish and matriculate my Master's Degree. It's just that I've found my interest lie in far different places than they did five years ago.

So today, when I happened upon the W.E.B. DuBois "Little Thinker" (at right - isn't he great?!) while perusing a local outdoor market, a wave of nostalgia washed over me. This period of self-reflection and change upon which I have undertaken is not just about the physical. It's about the mental and psychological.

I miss that dorky intellectual who could prattle on about the NAACP, Reconstruction, and the Third Sector. I miss that dedicated graduate student who could bang out a 12-page paper in one night and actually - actually! - make it mean something.

There's something to be said for discipline of the body and of the mind. And I've been sorely lacking in both. There's an easy fix for the former: I keep to my training plan and run a 10K in October. But for the latter, it's not so easy...