This is me!

So now that I’ve got my Princess Half Marathon report done, I’ll take a step back and introduce myself! My name is Tracy and I’m a mom of one teenage girl and I’m 41 years old…very close to 42. I used to run cross country in high school and truth be told, I sucked. I didn’t like it AND I sucked. Distance just was not my thing but I loved my teammates so I stuck with it as best I could. I dabbled in track in college until I blew out my knee in the first year and after that I did nothing. Over the course of the next 20 years or so I tried to start working out at the Y, tried swimming (I hate water), I got a bike and it felt very foreign to me and tried some more running but I gave up on all of those. I was just a lazy blob for 20 years. Somehow I lucked out and I had a good metabolism so I equated being a decent weight with being fit. But then age 40 hit me like a ton of bricks I gradually started putting on weight and I’d get winded and tired just riding the escalator. Haha! I couldn't fit any of my work clothes anymore and had to start buying larger pants and flowy tops to hide my spare tire. So last summer I bought myself a pair of running shoes and I was determined to stick it out this time and mainly it was to get the extra pounds off.

Every other week I did Seattle Sutton’s Healthy Eating (they premake your meals for a week with fresh, yummy ingredients with proper portion sizes) and I started running a little bit by my house about two or three nights per week. I started to see some great results and when I got to where I wanted to be, I stopped the Seattle Sutton’s. I honestly think that I would have stopped running and fallen back to where I was if it wasn’t for my friend Sadie-jo. We were roommates in college and she was that one person that “gets me” and we have the same sarcastic sense of humor. We honestly hadn’t hung out for years with just a passing email or lunch every now and then. And I mean few and far between. But one day we discovered that we’d both started running and we decided to do a 5K together. She was a lot faster than I am (and still is) and she could run more miles than I could (and still can!) but she encouraged me and we went on some runs together. I know that she was holding back and going slower than normal and I can’t thank her enough because she got me over that “I hate running” hump and I actually started to enjoy it! And now Sadie-jo and I barely go a day without texting or Facebooking or emailing! It's great to have her back.

Our first 5K was an alumni run at the college we went to and we got our honeys to run with us! Her honey happens to be an amazing runner so it wasn’t hard to twist his arm. My honey however, went into it with virtually no training. They all beat me by a ton but after that I was hooked!! Here is my honey and me after our first race.

By the way, after we finished I said “That was so fun!!! I can’t wait to do it again!” and honey said “I wouldn’t call that fun” and he hasn’t done a race since and just sticks to our treadmill.

I couldn’t wait to find more races and Sadie-jo signed up along with me and we had so much fun! I had so much fun that with only two 5Ks under my belt I decided to sign up for a half marathon! I figured that I should ramp up my training and I made the mistake of going apeshit about running. I knew almost nothing about form and how to take care of myself and I ran myself right into a stress fracture in my tibia. The biggest mistake I made was taking long strides and when I was going downhills I was jamming my feet into the ground while taking those long strides. And combine that with being lactose intolerant and getting very little calcium, it was bad news. So in the middle of training for a half marathon I had to cease and desist. Not a good feeling at all. Luckily it wasn’t a really bad stress fracture and I slowly got back into training and obviously I was able to do the half. I honestly think I could have benefitted from some more time off because I still have pain and I don’t think I let it heal properly but I thought I needed to get out there so I could complete the half. But I did it!

As a person who has only started really running in their 40s, I have so many things to talk about! And so many running related things in general! So thanks for joining me and we can learn about this running thing together!