fear

When I started my fitness journey I had made a promise to my son I would get healthy. It was hard. I remember being on that treadmill at a whopping 3.8 miles an hour pushing so hard to work up to two miles at a time. Then, I always knew I pushed hard when on the way home I would break out in hives. To this day, none of my medical colleagues can tell my why in those moments I would have such a huge histamine release, but I did. Here I sit, two years later, many more training sessions behind me and have not experienced that in a very long time. However, it is stuff like this that seemed to provoke fear. Would I anaphylax and stop breathing?  Couple this with my history of terrible obesity fueling previous difficult exercise attempts. I had fear of wheezing, fear of sweating too much, fear of looking silly, the list was endless. In talking with a team 1DOS member yesterday who was trying to figure out how to push harder it suddenly dawned on me that every harder thing we attempt is limited solely by fear.

I started to think about all the things I was afraid of along the way. Would I hurt my shoulder if I tried a heavier weight despite being more than comfortable with what I was lifting at the time. Truthfully, I pushed past that through a trainer laughing and telling me to lift heavier, thus fueling my fear of looking silly. I was afraid for a time if I rowed harder I would pass out. Well that is possible, but I could probably go a bit harder than I was and not pass out. Little by little. Fear after fear. Slowly putting them to rest until I got pretty comfortable with making progress. The hives went away and I found myself in a good place. Chugging along like the Little Engine That Could. Small gains every week, new goals set. Over and over.

Then came today. A Spartan workout. Two hours of Spartan training by Spartan trainers. Yep I could do that. I did a 90 minute Orangetheory yesterday. I got this. Then I got the email. The confirmation of today's adventure. Um. This workout was partially outside. Um. It is Syracuse. It is December. Outside?  Enter fear. Yesterday, watching the several inches of snow fall I got really worried. I had no idea if we would be in a park or a parking lot or what. But the Batman to my Robin, my son was going. I simply could not bail out on him. So, I did my best to dress in layers and try to be ready.

We got up early, 5:30, as Syracuse is a 2 hour drive. I guess it was a good thing the snow had stopped.....maybe not such a great thing it was replaced by freezing rain. The drive up just fueled my concern. On arriving, we found the hosting gym was a warehouse gym on the fourth floor of this old industrial building. It was painted black with rings a ropes hanging from the ceiling. Yep a badass gym. We were told at the door we would be outside for half the workout. Well, that meant parking lot. I spent the first half worrying about what being outside would be. It was cold. It was wet. It was a light mist of a rain. I would soon find out.

The trainer outlined the core Spartan exercises and several of them involved being on the ground. I looked around at the puddles and slush and it seemed terrifying. Pretty soon it was time. I would realize doing diamond push-ups on cold wet concrete with numb fingers and wet hair from the rain that those people who told me in the beginning that I was capable of so much more just may have been right. People knowing I was doing this,  did laugh at me today. Why on earth would I get up at 5 in the morning, drive two hours to workout in the snow and rain today? Because I am finally learning that there is something amazing that lives on the other side of my biggest fears and sometimes that means spending a little time doing burpees in the snow.

Finding the Hero

A few days ago I walked into my bedroom to find "Underdog" playing on TV. I chuckled to myself as I thought about how somehow there is something magical about the master bedroom for kids. Something completely different about laying in the king sized bed and watching TV instead of the giant TV in the family room. I remember doing the same in my parents' room. I chose the little black and white for the chance to lay on the king sized waterbed over the pre remote era color Zenith that sat firmly on the multi shaded brown shag carpet in the family room. That thing was probably 4 million pounds. Somehow being in that bedroom made me feel more important. Nonetheless, it got me thinking about superheroes . The transformation of a mild mannered, nearly invisible person to an epic crime fighter performing physical feats.  We all love that story and have heard it in many varieties. It is the stuff of blockbuster movies.

On this fitness journey I guess you could say I was the underdog. Decades of obesity and epic fails with my own health. There are many others like me out there. The Shoeshine Boys, Clark Kents and Peter Parkers of our time. The unassuming nerds that never seemed like they could go places. Some of us keep ourselves in that place, believing the voices in our heads that start with,"I can't..." while others learn to take off the obligatory white button down shirt and discover the superhero like insignia on our chests. I suppose if I could figure out a magical formula to give to people to be able to easily make that leap I would be a millionaire. Maybe Peter Parker could send me the magical spider that transformed his world.....

For me, it has been learning what I was actually capable of versus what I thought I was capable of. In my world that came from a variety of sources. Friends who had traveled this road and trainers who I originally thought were nuts with how confident they were in my abilities. Little by little my figurative white shirt began to open up to reveal there was a higher caliber of person underneath, capable of so much more.  I may not leap tall buildings or swing from a web but I learned I can climb 10 foot walls and cross some cool monkey bars without falling into a pit of mud. The funny thing is I could not do that when the same style bars were on the playground at my grade school, or maybe it was just I had no idea I could.  Each muddy challenge, every bump and bruise and even the shear terror of some of the challenges have begun to help me find the best version of myself.

So if I could open up that shirt to reveal my superhero chest what would it be?  As a true child of the 80's I suppose it would be a Linda Carter style Wonder Woman ensemble, however, sadly the good people of Victoria's Secret have not busted into the superhero fashion world, which to be fair, is probably more a blessing than a curse. If they had I may end up the cover page of the people of Wal Mart.

Nonetheless, learning to not settle for mild mannered persona, somehow not capable of more has been a journey. One I am still working on. There are still the days I need to take myself back, lay in my own king sized bed, watching the smaller TV and finding my own importance just like the kids. I am only grateful now to not have the tiny black and white with rabbit ears.

Paying it Forward

I seemed to have had a small hiatus from blogging. Since the epic Spartan Race a lot has happened.  I have found some other lifetime non athletes to take on the Chicago Super. We have become a ragtag team each with our own fitness story to tell. Each one of us coming from a different unhealthy place for a variety of reasons. Slowly but surely our team has grown in just one month's time. We have learned to become accountable to one another and encourage one another and now every last one of us is financially committed to this 8-11 mile race.

This single thing had me thinking about public journeys. Going public with my journey was a bit like being naked at Wal Mart on Black Friday. Terrifying. Vulnerable. We all end up on this journey due to some sort of failing or pain and to make it all public is the chance to relive it all and be rejected all over again. Yet I have found something different entirely.

Our team is 1DOS.  One degree of separation. A teammate deemed me the "Kevin Bacon" of the group as all members know me from a different place. As it turns out, a friend not on the team knows Kevin and let him know about our team and apparently he is now in our corner too....no pressure there. Only Kevin Bacon watching. Well as my friend explained he texted Kyra as Kevin is not great about answering. Ok wait.... Kyra Sedgwick?  Well 1DOS would not let her down either....hopefully.

This week our team has grown to seven members. Seven terrified people risking public physical failure and staying on a path none of us have been able to stay on before. Seeing everyone's gains is awe inspiring as everyone pushes a wee bit harder each day to do the team proud.

With all this I was finally able to answer a lifelong question. Why?  Why am I fighting obesity?  Why am I bullied? Why can I not do this?  Decades of anguish.  Decades of failure. Now I am able to take that and use it to drag others along this path.  Seeing the excitement in their posts, the enthusiasm over our big race which by all rights none of us thought we could do makes every last bit of this lifelong battle absolutely worth it. My ability to pay this forward this holiday season is truly a gift and a constant reminder that once again the best is yet to come.

So hiatus is over. Time to get this blog moving again as Team 1DOS has a story to tell and we have only started chapter one. AROO!

Spartan reflections

The voices. The voices we all have in our heads on some sort of replay. It has been an interesting week as I neared ever closer to my first Spartan Race Saturday. I know people say before you die your life flashes before your eyes. In my case taking on a giant feat I never thought was possible it was more the quiet replay if a lifetime of voices slowly entering in and out of my consciousness throughout the week as the race got closer.

When I was in elementary school there were no buddy benches. No anti bully movements. Childhood obesity was not an epidemic and there was no such thing as a "participation trophy". I for some reason, was reminded of lining up along the brick wall of Abraham Lincoln School as the token fat kid as some much healthier athletic children were choosing up sides for the sport of the day. I would be picked last. Somehow the  consolation prize for whatever team captain came up short. As I think of this I remember the eye rolls and the nearly audible sighs as I joined whatever team got stuck with me. Thus went all of school for me. I would be last to finish the mile. Wheezing as I climbed "hernia hill" in junior high to end that run faced by all of my thinner fitter classmates.

I thought about the bullying I went through. in my head this week I could almost hear the things that were said and done. I could hear the negative things said by family reminding I just would not measure up and a host of other things that I now know kept me improsioned in layers of fat and lifetime of obesity.

Saturday was a new beginning for me. Despite two years of training and innumerable life changes I feel like I am once again at the starting line of a whole new world of bigger things. My day started with 20 of my closest friends meeting Jack and I for breakfast for a big send off to the pinnacle of my training. We laughed and we ate and I could hear the laughter much louder than my previous prison of negativity. As Jack and I took off for Boston, as is often our way, deep discussion ensued. His future, the election, and treading ever so lightly into what our next race might be provided we survived this.

As we parked the car we were engulfed in the history of Fenway. The neighborhood surrounding not much different than the vibe of my beloved Wrigley. We could hear the music from the stadium, the sun was setting and the lights coming up in the stadium itself. Ultimately we found ourselves it the tunnel with a four foot wall standing between us and the starting line. Finally, it was our turn. We hoisted it over the wall and took off with 13 other runners most of whom sprinted out of the tunnel and onto the field. We did not. In that moment, despite the sprinting runners poking my crazy competitive nature I found myself saying to Jack,"I am starting at my base pace and running my own race." He just smiled as he knew I was trying to convince myself of this. Later as we passed most of these runners I would find that strategy to be useful. Up and down, crisscrossing the stadium at times just running, at times, carrying sand bags or a five gallon jug of water at others. There would be the z wall I came off of and had to do my burpees. Jack did them with me despite making it across counting them out and encouraging me every step of the way. There would be the box jumps I have not done since I broke my hip and scaling a 15 foot cargo net despite my horrible fear of heights, the run outside the stadium along the upper deck walkway where we could look at the night Boston skyline and see for what appeared to be miles. Then there were walls. The four footer at the start was the shortest. They got taller as the race went on, the last being ten feet. A ten foot wall. No rope. Just this gigantic wall that seemed impossible. Even at 5 ft 10 the wall looked huge. A fellow spartan stopped to show me how to do it and before I knew it I was over. The final obstacle was hanging heavy bags to push through. I channeled my inner black belt, as I trained in martial arts for eight years, and emerged sprinting faster than I ever have crossing the finish line throwing my arms around my Batman Jack and bursting into tears. It was an end to the negative voices that trapped me in a sea of obesity for decades. As it turns out, those voices were wrong. I am capable of so much more. Having the medal around my neck was surreal and I am almost afraid to see the professional pics in a few days as I am sure my face is tear stained and wearing a look of disbelief. Seeing my own son's pride in me and uttering the words,"yeah mom. We did that " was just indescribable.

As we reveled on the way home, our excitement was overshadowed by news there were gunmen at the mall where he worked. Shots fired into the Hollister where he is employed. A busy Sat he normally would have been there but was with me instead. We began to consider all the things that had to happen to keep him safe today. I had to be fit. I had to be at a place where we could do this race. He had to be fit too. He commits to training with me two days a week now. Two years led up to this moment. It is overwhelming that he was supposed to be there.

So many emotions we could not even fully process, especially me. Joe DeSena who invented the Spartan Race always says, you will know at the finish line why you do this race. I certainly knew some stuff in my sobbing moment at the finish line, like a lifetime of obesity, bullying and negativity was no longer permanent, but, more importantly, what I figured out in the aftermath was I have so much more to discover. As I turn 47 today I now feel Saturday's finish line is now my starting line. Jack and I spent the day texting to work out our next races. It is time to take on more. Spartan Winter Sprint is already committed, but more importantly and scary...Spartan Super Chicago here we come. As always today is a new beginning. The best is yet to come.

Inspiration from My Kinda Cubs

I can remember sitting on the multicolored brown shag carpeting in the basement watching the zenith with the rabbit ears as my dad sat on the mod style avocado green canvas couch behind me. Granted we had a very stylish bright orange high back chair and mustard yellow shorter round chair to match but he preferred the couch. It was the early 80's and summer in Chicago which meant two things. The Cubs on WGN, with Harry Carey announcing and watermelon. My dad even introduced my oldest two children to this tradition when they were little. Back in those days the Cubs were not a winning team. They did not need to be really. They were a Chicago institution and still are. It was about the atmosphere and the love of the game and I can guarantee a good chunk of my childhood friends have similar memories of watching them in their own horribly decorated family rooms.

This year was different. As most of the free world knows a 108 year drought was broken last week. Over a century. I found myself thinking about how exciting it was for us fans to watch the crazy celebrations and have our smallest children wander through the house singing,"Go Cubs Go"....ok that would be my smallest child....as if the Cubs had finally crossed the ultimate finish line. It occurred to me all of the athletes that came and went in that time period. Slugging away yet never hitting this mark. There was all the management that I would only assume was trying desperately to get the Cubs back on top. The frustration that likely ensued over this many years without a winning season.

I think this should be our takeaway from the Cubs. We all have those fans who support us no matter what our failures are. Those are the people we need to keep in our lives. The ones willing to sit on the shag carpet and cheer us on when we fall on our faces, or as Bill Murray did on camera, openly weep for us in our successes. These are the people who sing along with Harry Carey in the seventh inning stretch no matter how many runs behind we are.

Outside of the people, the Cubs have taught us a lot about perseverance. Exactly 108 years of perseverance. Getting my head around that is almost impossible. Falling down, getting up again to slug it out some more, strategizing and re strategizing for over a century despite frustration is nothing short of inspirational. I think about my decades of weight loss and fitness failures. The fair weather friends that have come and gone as I fell on my face time after time. The crazy strategies I employed myself, everything from fad diets to pills, to different exercise attempts , like in the 90's when I attended step aerobics at a studio that had an affinity for the song,"Achy Breaky Heart". Failing and failing again. Until now.

This is why this week my Cubs workout tank demonstrates more than my love for my kinda town. It inspires me to keep slugging, keep going and look for the true fans in my life.  As I look toward my Spartan Race, in six days, a World Series of sorts for me as until now I had considered this completely out of reach I consider the Cubs winning the series to be my sign that I too, can cross this finish line. Ironically the race is at Fenway. The only thing that would make it better would be if it were at Wrigley.

Well, it won't stop me from singing,"hey Chicago, what do you say?  The Cubs are going to win today!"

Pieces of My Puzzle

A 1000 piece puzzle. One of my 84 year old father's favorite activities. When I was growing up he would start one and sit there for hours on end carefully sorting the edge pieces, slowly finding parts of pictures as he smoked his pipe. The smell of whiskey Borkum Riff in the air. Hours and hours across days at a time he would patiently put them together. Us kids would stop by and help from time to time until the last piece was in. I remember that sense of satisfaction that went with the puzzle completion. It would sit on the card table a few days as we would admire it walking by. Then, one day he would simply dismantle it, put it back in the box and on the shelf. This one act I really struggled with. I mean really.....all that work to just dismantle it. Later I would learn that there was a product called puzzle glue. However for my dad, that was not needed. He would simply need another few days to work it again months later or he would simply get a new one. He never had the need for puzzle glue or framing.

I often think about puzzles when I look at my schedule. I have work at two different ER's, four children still at home at very different places in their lives.  The college kid learning to fly, the junior high boy fighting through those years, the little guys learning to read in a language that is not their first.  My schedule is like a jigsaw puzzle. Fitting the pieces together sometimes minute by minute. Coordinating activities, work, rides.... every week is an endless 1000 piece puzzle it is my job to put together.

That brings me to last week. I had picked up two days at my moonlighting gig. That brought my hours to 72 in 8 days. Six on, one off, one on. It just so happened that Hell Week was the same 8 days. Plus the kids' Halloween, half days due to parent teacher conferences and all other kinds of crazy. Yet. It was Hell Week at OTF.  There is this thing that happens when you make your journey public. You have very little room to give up. How to uphold that image of motivation and clean living when I really want my favorite sweats and a glass of wine and to sleep for about a week.

So, I sat at my table, following my dad's lead. I had the calendar in front of me trying to make all the pieces fit. I put my workouts behind kids and work but ahead of sleep and TV. I fit it all in even if it meant one 5:00 am workout where my 20 year old had come home to sleep and watch his siblings so I could go. Wow. That was a rough morning as I had gotten home from work at 11:30. I got it done though.  In the end I earned a spooky looking black tshirt with a cool looking skull on it for my efforts. There was something particularly ironic about that shirt and the challenges I beat to earn it. There were the obligatory pictures and high fives at the gym. I had done it.

In that moment I wondered if this is how my dad felt looking at the completed puzzle. That moment of satisfaction in a hard fought success. Then it happened. The realization that I had to turn the page on the calendar. A new week. A new puzzle. The completed puzzle would be dismantled and put back in the box and I would have to start again figuring it all out. This puzzle was different though. This one held a race looming ever closer and the notion that if I can work 72 hours in 8 days and still not miss a workout I certainly had no excuse this week, where I only work 28 hours in 6 days. I would try to hang my hat on taking a break for my two overnight shifts later this week but even that seems a bit flimsy after what I just did. So here I am. Workouts scheduled. Kids' schedule complete and race looming. That being said I think I finally understand the value of dismantling that puzzle and putting it back in the box like my dad used to. It is not about destroying what you worked hard to achieve, it is about reevaluating and working it out  again.... only better. I guess maybe my dad had it right all along. So this week I will keep the puzzle glue on the shelf and keep working as there are only 11 days 'till race day.

Live Our Lives in Chains

"Pinball Wizard", "Owner of the Lonely Heart", "I Can't Drive 55".....thus went the rocking playlist for the power workout the other day. The trainer, who is likely half my age, admitted with a chuckle,  had never heard half of the songs. Well, the other forty somethings and I had a great time singing along and in my case, tormenting my 20 year old working out with me that day, who surely would have preferred a little Wiz Khalifa to power through that 300 meter row.

By the time I hit the tread blocks, I was ready for the all outs that would surely come being a power day when I found myself suddenly blindsided. Hit square between the eyes with the musical styling of the Eagles. More specifically "Already Gone". I had not heard this in probably a decade. . As I sang along in my head, as singing out loud had two problems. First, I cannot carry a tune and second, running at full tilt on the treadmill does not lend itself to breathing let alone singing. However, there are times when you hear a song that feels a bit like an old shoe but suddenly seems all new again.

Well I know it wasn't you who held me down
Heaven knows it wasn't you who set me free
So often times it happens that we live our lives in chains
And we never even know we have the key

....and there it is..the reminder of all those times in my life I had blamed other people for my struggles with obesity. I had the bullies who's words were all too easy to settle into. There were those in my life who needed me to be that fat person to fill a need in their own lives.  I had my self imposed limitations where I put myself in that box. The one where I was convinced I "will never be thin, I am
Just not made that way" "I am not a runner and never will be" The laundry list of "I can't do that" which includes everything from wearing clothes not found in the plus size section to sticking to a healthy lifestyle to running a mile to ever even considering being on a rower.

 I was reminded I did live my life in chains. In my mind's eye I see the large links on the iron chains that wrapped around the Marley brothers from the Dickens classic. Each link a different representation of the things that kept me from reaching goals or moving in a positive direction. There are people on some of the links, other links hold my own limitations I have placed on myself some new, some so old that those links had been deeply imbedded in my own psyche. As I have battled through all of this, little by little snipping off link after link over the last two years:   diet, exercise, attitude, and changing relationships, I find I still am surprised by these links falling away. As the song goes, I finally learned I had the key all along.

So as I puff along through the LONG all outs that day...a full minute sprint might as well be a decade in this new runner's world,  I realize it is time to embrace the old me before I put her on a shelf as she has made me who I am today but at the same time realize she is already gone. That being said, it is time to lace up the Nike runners I love so much and have at it again. The big scary race is in 21 days and the only way to silence that little voice in my head from one of those chain links that says "maybe I can't do this" is to get to work so I can truly as the song goes."sing that victory song".