Born to run?

All the Bruce Springsteen fans landing here via some Google alert...sorry. You can click out now.

In some sort of misguided and arrogant flash of confidence, I signed up to *jog* (not walk) a 5K event on March 23. I loaded the app Couch to 5K on my phone and got to work. I have often written of my desire to run. I equate it with a certain level of fitness, leftover trauma from elementary school gym classes where the thinner, more beautiful people literally ran circles around the fat girl vainly attempting to keep up with them.

Couch to 5K is a nine-week program and I must admit, I thought it would be easier than it is. I consider myself to be in fairly decent shape but....this is kicking my ass. In the end, I suppose the goal is to have participants running a 5K in 30 minutes. Let me tell you, this is not going to happen! I can run for 25 minutes. I can probably run for 30 minutes (not there in the training yet). But not 5K (3.1 miles) in that length of time. Probably the most disappointing part of this whole training process is finding that my running is not much faster than my walking. While I expend a lot more energy "running", I don't get much farther than if I'd just walked. By now, I can walk pretty damn fast. Jogging is a knee and cardio killer. The point will not be whether or not I can job for 30 minutes, but whether I can do it for 35 or 40 minutes because I'm so damn slow.

So I'm sort of left feeling like the fat girl in gym class again. Yay. Nine weeks isn't going to cut it for me; I need more time. I don't think I'll be ready for the race March 23. That really disappoints me but it is what it is. I'll still try like hell - because I am stronger than I think I am - so we'll see.

I have more 5Ks scheduled for May, June and October, along with a walking half marathon in June. So I'm not done yet. Things just may be delayed for a while.

I have an appointment this morning with my family doctor. Feeling a bit off kilter lately, I will request that she order some blood work, especially iron and bone density. I am exhausted, foggy-minded and of low libido. All signs of iron deficiency. Also, I will finally ask for a referral to go see the Wizard of Oz, a.k.a. Dr. Nan - a plastic surgeon working out of Scarborough General Hospital. He has done plastics for many of my fellow WLS patients and they all seem to love him. He knows how to work with us and the system. I've been afraid he will tell me I need to lose more weight - especially since I'm about 20 pounds over my goal weight at this point.

Last year sucked. Since I wrote about it extensively, I won't go back into it here. The events did a number on me and I backslid. There are no excuses, although I have many. I'm getting back on track with my eating and exercise and it's slowly coming back off. My new job is helping; the fucking vending machines calling my name every night are not. I work 2nd shift and am alone in the front office with a multitude of treats that I have to pass by over and over again in the course of doing my job. More often than not, I am able to ignore them but there are times when, well, the Snickers or Kit Kat bar wins. I'm human, right? It's a work in progress.

But back to Dr. Nan....this excess skin is messing with my head and, I believe, plays a part in my backslide. I don't like what I see in the mirror. At all. There are times when I think to myself "Why am I bothering when I still look like complete shit?" I know what you're thinking but honest to god, if you haven't been here, you don't get it. You don't know what it's like to lose over 200 pounds and be reminded every day of what you did to yourself. The guilt and self-loathing that comes along with that is palpable and can be more front and center than when I weighed 444 pounds. I think if I am to truly find success, I need to start the plastics journey if I can. OHIP will likely pay for some of it; I certainly can't pay for ANY of it. So I guess I just need to try and get what I can get and be done with it. Better than nothing.