Fitness Foray

I hated running when I was young.  To be specific, I hated running when it was a forced, timed, results based event, i.e., the twice yearly mile run.  I was introduced to this dreadful event in  junior high.  Around the small eighth of a mile track we had to slog eight times.  In high school, the track got bigger, the lap number smaller.  Four times around a seemingly huge rubbery oval.  

I also can't do a pull up.  Never could.  In elementary school we had the choice of doing a pull up, a flexed arm hang, or, for those of us who could do neither, a laying pull up, which involved laying on your back with your hands clasping a bar, and pulling your chin up to meet it.  Not fun.  I could do, say, three or four before I would get either tired or bored and stop.

I didn't mind the sit-ups or the sit and reach.  Both were fairly easy and quick to accomplish.  Most everyone knows about the sit-up.  I could do, say, forty or so in a minute. And the sit and reach...sitting on your hiney and stretching your arms across a marked board that measured flexibility was my type of exercise.  

This wasn't to say I was completely out of shape or had no athletic prowess.  I enjoyed sports; being a tomboy, I played my share of basketball, flag football, softball, and volleyball.  I was on the basketball team in fifth grade (although my esteemed career ended with the season,) on the softball and volleyball teams in sixth grade, then made the volleyball team in the seventh grade.  I loved to play, loved to move, and loved to chase.

I guess I just didn't like being graded on my fitness (or lack of.)

Fast forward twelve or so years.  I'm married, teaching in an incredibly emotionally wrenching assignment, and have just moved into a house...a house surrounded by empty fields that borders a canal running east to west.  A packed earthen path meanders through the fields, just right for an overweight, over stressed woman and her new walking partner, Cheswick.  Cheswick the dog was a stray.  As a puppy I found him nosing his way among the student's leftover lunches at the school I taught at.  He was about three months old when I called my husband and told him about "this puppy with floppy ears and big brown eyes".  "Bring him home," he said, surprising me no end.  And thus started a relationship that opened my eyes to the pleasures of fitness...of goals, running highs, itchy shins, and hopefully, a 5k race or triathlon someday.  

And the pull up?  I'm weight training now, and up to 15 and 20 pound weights.  But I have not attempted to do a pull up in years.  I can do 10 "guy style" push-ups and carry both girls for a short distance.  But I still don't know if I can spear the white whale of my fitness journey.  We'll see.  Stay tuned...