It's official. My first 5k is over and what a rush of emotions. What started as a challenge to myself ended in a car ride of tears home remembering the real reason that I run.
Let me start by telling everyone to start with that after 6ish months of running, I still HATE it 90% of the time. I started working out last August because my brother convinced me that joining a gym was a good idea. After losing 80 pounds over the past four years I had plateaued at a weight of 149 lbs and so I caved to the peer pressure and joined the gym in hopes of losing the final 19 pounds to achieve my dream weight. At some point I started to run. I remember feeling so accomplished when I finished a long stretch of running and enjoying the feeling of working my body the way it's intended to be worked but it was hard to run and boring and I don't know that I'll ever shake the feeling that I'd rather be doing anything except running.
So around February I got a Facebook post from my brother's friend telling me that I should do the color run with her and her friends. I checked it out and thought I had plenty of time to be well trained so I signed up under the team name Make It Rain Bows (which I loved and thought was super creative)! I was so excited and scared. I was not a person who ran races yet here I was setting a goal of running a 5k.
And so yesterday was it. I woke up around 4am so nervous that I couldn't go back to sleep, left my house at 4:45 to pick up my brother and made the hour and a half drive to Tulsa. We arrived, hooked up with our teams and waited for the start. My team found a spot in the middle of the pack and waited as wave after wave of groups of a thousand left for their run.
Let me start by telling everyone to start with that after 6ish months of running, I still HATE it 90% of the time. I started working out last August because my brother convinced me that joining a gym was a good idea. After losing 80 pounds over the past four years I had plateaued at a weight of 149 lbs and so I caved to the peer pressure and joined the gym in hopes of losing the final 19 pounds to achieve my dream weight. At some point I started to run. I remember feeling so accomplished when I finished a long stretch of running and enjoying the feeling of working my body the way it's intended to be worked but it was hard to run and boring and I don't know that I'll ever shake the feeling that I'd rather be doing anything except running.
So around February I got a Facebook post from my brother's friend telling me that I should do the color run with her and her friends. I checked it out and thought I had plenty of time to be well trained so I signed up under the team name Make It Rain Bows (which I loved and thought was super creative)! I was so excited and scared. I was not a person who ran races yet here I was setting a goal of running a 5k.
And so yesterday was it. I woke up around 4am so nervous that I couldn't go back to sleep, left my house at 4:45 to pick up my brother and made the hour and a half drive to Tulsa. We arrived, hooked up with our teams and waited for the start. My team found a spot in the middle of the pack and waited as wave after wave of groups of a thousand left for their run.
I wish I could say I ran the entire thing but I can't. I barely made it to the first color marker at 1km. I wanted to quit so bad and walk the entire thing but my now dear friend Jessica May kept cheering me on and telling me I could do it. She had more faith in me than I did. We paused to get doused in colors every kilometer along with getting water every kilometer but the stopping made it okay and ridiculously fun! The clouds of color floating in the air gave me hope that we could keep going.
As we got more tired our running spurts became shorter until the last kilometer. We decided to run the last kilometer and finish strong and we did. We ran the last kilometer and it was indeed uphill! Jessica's faith in me had restored my faith in myself and even though I didn't want to be running I kept going with a friend by my side. We celebrated in a cloud of multiple colors, high fives, and congratulations.
On my solitary drive home I couldn't stop smiling. I had done it. I had completed a race. I began thinking about how I didn't have anything I needed to work towards now and how I wanted to quit running and then this thought slipped into my mind..."this isn't for you." i thought for a moment because if i wasn't running for myself who was I running for. I had forgotten why I had truly decided to change my life from my eating habits to my activity level. I wasn't doing this for me to lose weight or start racing or to prove to other people that I'm not fat and lazy any more; I changed for my kids.
I never want my children to worry about my health. I never want them thinking that I could die early from diabetes, heart disease, or any other obesity related illness. I never want them to struggle with their weight. I never want them being made fun of for their weight or having an obesity related illness at an early age or at any age for that matter. And so I changed for them. I quit eating fried foods, I quit eating enough food for three people, I educated myself in everything nutritional I could, I started eating foods I hate all for my children. I have strayed this year and today I remembered how important my lifestyle change is. My children are more important than anything! Thank you Color Run for reminding me of that. My children are the reason I run!
