A Lifetime of Fitness

A friend of mine posted a question yesterday on Face Book...What does lifetime fitness mean to you?  That question got me to thinking because I know I WANT it, but I wasn't exactly sure how to put it in words.  Being a verbal processor, I'm doing what I always do when I don't know how to answer a question...I "talk" until I figure it out!

My answer yesterday was:   

To me it's about balance. Balanced nutrition, balanced workouts (to include appropriate rest). It means not focusing on a short term goal (a specific race or losing weight for an event)...it means adopting fitness as a lifestyle for a lifetime.

Not a bad start...but as usual, I have more to say than would be socially acceptable in a Face Book post.

I can remember the first time I thought about fitness.  I was in the Army (Arkansas Army National Guard to be more accurate).  I was going to be going away to Basic Training for eight weeks and I had heard it would be physically grueling.  I started going to the gym with my dad.  I did sit ups using a bar (by the way--that really works your quads in can you were wondering!).  I worked out with some machines.  I may have even jogged around the indoor basketball courts (13 laps made a mile but I'm sure I lost count and never made it even that far).  The work outs where at best sporadic.

When I got to Basic, I didn't have a choice about fitness.  They say after 21 days of doing something it becomes a habit.  Well, I think that's wrong, PT (physical training) did NOT become a habit.  You know, come to think of it, maybe it would have been a habit--to go work out with a group of about 180 women with drill sergeants yelling commands of what to do next--if I had stayed in that environment.  But I didn't.  I went home.

We were required to pass a PT test (so many push ups and so many sit ups in a two minute period for each exercise and a 2 mile run in a certain amount of time).  I barely passed mine every time I had taken it, and always with someone's help.  Out of the whole time I was in the military, there was only one time during that period of my life I self-motivated.  I was running pretty much every day-trying to increase my two-mile time speed by running two miles (not the best plan, but better than nothing at all).  Then...I got married and suddenly getting out of bed wasn't as easy as it was when I was single.

Not mine, but exactly like it!

From that point until a year ago I was an on-again/off-again (mostly off again) exerciser.  I remember joining a gym after my son was born.  When he was a year old I had gotten back down to my pre-baby weight....and then I got pregnant again.  After my daughter was born, I tried to go back to the gym, but the child care there was less than sub-standard.  So, I bought a Jane Fonda video tape, complete with an aerobic step!!  When that one got old, I bought several other tapes.  Then...we moved to a much smaller house with no room to do my grapevines and step-kicks across the floor! 

So, I started walking...when it was nice outside, and when my husband could watch the kids, and when I didn't have anything else that needed to be done (read: I wanted to do it more than I did).  I had just about gotten into a good routine of walunning (walking more than running) about four times a week...then I got divorced.  It took a couple of years for life to settle back down.  I got remarried, and joined another gym.  I went regularly, until I lost the weight I wanted to lose.  After that I went sporadically.  Then...we moved.

At that point I got a very stressful job.  Just at the time I needed exercise the most, there weren't enough hours in the day for it.  I had two children, a step-son, and a job that took more time than I had.  I convince my husband we needed to buy an elliptical.  It was the cheapest, smallest (read: useless) one I could find (I think it was $175 from Sears!).  I may have used it a couple of times.  Maybe.  A few years later a friend sold us a (REALLY NICE) dreadmill.  I think the kids used it more than I did...until I went through my second divorce.

I started walunning about four miles pretty much every day (sometimes twice a day)....for about a year or so.  Then...I moved a couple of times, met my current husband (he's a keeper BTW)...and got out of the habit.  About the time I got married for the third and final time, I joined a gym and hired a personal trainer.  I worked out with him for 12 weeks....and loved to hate him.  As soon as my time with him ended, I pretty much stopped going to the gym.  Then...I moved, again.  I stopped exercising with any consistency and I gained weight. 

I had gotten up to what was just about my heaviest non-pregnancy weight when I took the best job I've ever had in my life---HOMEMAKER!!  That was a year ago January...  Once again, I set a goal-to run a marathon in December of the same year.  I found a training plan, and started following it.

Little did I know that somewhere along the way (I'm not exactly sure when it happened)...exercise went from being a means to an end to being the end itself!  It's part of my life now.  Yes, I'm "always" training for a race, but that isn't why I exercise.  I do it because when I don't I feel like something is missing.  It's not a habit, it's part of my life.  It's very much like brushing my teeth.  I might go to bed with out brushing, but I don't go a whole day without it.  Even when I don't feel like it, I do it anyway because I know it's good for me and I'll feel better afterward.

When I sat down to write this I thought I hadn't really had a lifetime of fitness...but the truth is I've had a lifetime trying to figure it out.  I've wanted to have it in my life, but it usually revolved around a specific goal (mainly losing weight, or more recently running a marathon), that had an end.  As it is now, I can't imagine a time in my life that I will not be doing some form of exercise.  I love it.  I love what it does for my body, my mind, my spirit. 

It's a way of life, a way of life I love.

Thanks for stopping in!  Come again soon!
:D

Hood to Coast--Little Did I Know

I remember the first time I heard about the Hood to Coast race.  I thought it was some kind of cross country thing (like literally across the country-from the Hood (NYC) to the coast (LA)).  Don't ask me why, I have no idea.  That's just what came to mind when I heard about it.  Little did I know I would soon become well acquainted with the race.

Then, quite some time later, I was listening to The Marathon Show as the host, Joe Taricani, interviewed the director of the Hood To Coast movie.  I knew right then an there I would eventually run the race.  Little did I know just a short week after the movie premiere I would be forming a Hood to Coast team!!

Let me back up just a bit.  When I heard the movie was going to play at a local theater, I bought my ticket.  Even though it snowed a few days before the show (making roads icey enough most locals didn't want to leave their houses) my running buddy/neighbor/friend, Turtle, being from Ohio, agreed to drive us to the single-night showing.  As we watched, I could feel her excitement for the race surpassing my own.  When I told her I "planned" on running the race "one day" she quickly told me she was in.  Little did I know she was a make-it-happen kind of gal.  Within 24 hours, the event became much more than just a race.

I thought the only way to enter the race was by sending in a registration a year in advance and then hoping to be picked for the lottery.  Little did I know, there is also a guaranteed way to be entered into this race as a first-time team...by raising $15,000 for American Cancer Society.  (The money is raised a year before the actual race.)  Turtle, being the visionary I have come to realize she is, decided this goal was certainly achievable, if we could come up with a team.  Little did she know, I knew THAT was something I could certainly make happen.  In less than a week...we had a joined with twelve other Huntsville women as passionate about fighting cancer as they are about running (we have a team of 12 plus two alternates).

There have been a couple of changes, but this is most of the team...

We are:

In the next year and a half you'll hear quite a bit more about the team, the race, and my training.  In the mean time, check out our team blog, Journey to the Hood, read about who we are and who we're running for.  While you're at it...why not go ahead and MAKE A DONATION to American Cancer Society or even join our team (in our efforts to fight cancer, not to run the race-we had to cap that at 12!).

Thanks for stopping in, come again soon!
:D

I am David O'Keefe

The overall winner of last year's McKay Hollow Madness was David O'Keefe.  He won by well over five minutes!!

I have the pleasure of knowing David and have been trying to casually ask him questions about his race strategy without making it seem I am pumping him for information.  But, he's one of those, "I just go out and run as hard as I can" kind of people who make it seem so easy.  Like there's no planning involved or necessary...just RUN.  ((Now, I don't know if that's really how he thinks because I've never come out and asked him...but that's my impression anyway.))

So the other day while running trails, trying to familiarize myself with the course, among the mantras of "I am a billy goat.  I am a hurdler." and "I CAN.  I WILL" I also found myself repeating (more times than I really care to admit), "I am David O'Keefe!!"

I felt like I was really saying (pause the music and press play)

Amazingly enough, just saying it made me feel like I was running faster!!  Like I said in yesterday's post, I don't believe in mantras.  And, let me be very clear, I don't really believe I'm bat...I mean David O'Keefe.  I didn't fall and hit my head...




To me, "I am David O'Keefe" isn't about winning the race...Again, I have no delusions of winning McKay (even female masters) (this year...).  It's about much more than that.  David is a genuinely good person who loves the Lord.  He works hard at everything he does, whether that's his job, leading Bible study, being a husband and father, mission work, or running.

"I am David O'Keefe" is a representative conglomeration of ideas I'm coming to believe about myself.  The idea I really can run faster and stronger than I have in the past...the idea I can run with more confidence...the idea I can run in such a way someone else might look at me and think "You make it look easy"...the idea running can be a part of who I am but not take away from who I am in Christ.

There's no doubt in my mind I'll use this phrase again during the race, but don't expect to see THIS David O'Keefe at the finish line around the 2 hour time window...I'll be a hurdling billy goat muttering under my breath, "I CAN.  I WILL." about the time the real David O'Keefe is getting his award! 

Thanks for stopping in...come again soon!  :D