Tag Archives: women runners

Typical Runner

“You know, you don’t have the body of a typical runner.”

I heard those words a few days ago from an acquaintance I bumped into at a grocery store. There was no preamble – no previous talk of running or anything of that nature. He’s just someone on my facebook who sees my running posts and I guess it was fresh on his mind so he decided to let me know his thoughts.

Alrighty then.

So…I don’t have the body of a typical runner. Got it.

When I later mentioned this to my husband, he insisted that the guy couldn’t have meant it *that* way. You know: that way. As in, the way I took it. And how did I take it? He was saying that I was too fat to fit the stereotypical mold of a runner.

And as hard as I try, I can’t think of anything else he could’ve meant. But you know what? That’s okay.

Because he’s right.

In fact, if we want to go with stereotypes, I don’t have the body of a “typical” woman either. I’m not a size zero with monstrous boobs and a tiny waist. (Okay, I might have one of those but without the other two, it doesn’t really count.)

But, back to the point. Let’s just go ahead and get this out there. I’m a fat runner.

Finishing The Bear. A 5 mile climb up Grandfather Mountain in North Carolina.

Now, I’m not obese by any means. Sometimes not even considered “overweight” on some charts. I’m 5’6″ and I weigh 152 as of the writing of this blog. But as far as runners go? Yep. I’m a chubster.

If you’re not a runner, you may not be familiar with the fact that some races have what they call a “Clydesdale division.” Yes, you read that right. Clydesdale. As in a big, fat horse. One local race I run annually has this very division. And guess what? I qualify. Yep. A 5’6″ and 152 pound woman falls into the big and fat category. I’ve always been terrified to sign up for it though. I don’t know why – it”s almost a guaranteed trophy because no one else ever signs up for it either. Last year, I watched the “winning” (only) woman in the category walk up to get her award and she looked even smaller than me. I couldn’t help but wonder how she felt walking up there. “And the chubby runner award goes to…!”

But you know what? After this random comment in the grocery store from this guy, I’ve given this a lot of thought. And I wonder if maybe I’ve been looking at this the wrong way.

Let me tell you what it’s like to not be a tiny runner.

First, my legs are strong as crap. No joke. These things have to lug 152 pounds around – not 110. They have had to work hard for these past five running years and, therefore, I have massive muscles. In fact, one day last week I had to put down a new rug that needed to be scooted under a couch. Rather than waiting for help, I put out the foot stools on the recliner end of the sofa, lied down on the floor, positioned my feet under the reclined foot stool, and used the strength in my legs to lift the couch while I scooted the rug underneath.

How about that?

I’m sure it wasn’t pretty, but by granny, it got done.

1995 – my first hospitalization for lymphoma treatment. (That’s my adorable little brother)

Also, fitness does not come naturally to me. I’ve never been an especially “active” person. In fact, I was pretty sick my senior year of high school and that left me weak and lazy for years after. Before my lymphoma diagnosis, I weighed over 200 pounds. Of course, I lost some weight during the treatments but it didn’t stay away long after I started improving. I’ve always been a “bigger” girl. After I started running five years ago, I dropped a bit of weight but not a ton. It wasn’t a quick weight loss, and it wasn’t a total weight loss. But it did happen. And the funny thing about it?

I didn’t even care.

I had attempted running sooo many times in the past for that very purpose – I just had to lose weight. But it never worked, because I didn’t stick with it. And I didn’t stick with it because my heart was not in it. Once I made the decision to run to strengthen myself – body and mind – that’s when I started noticing changes.

Another thing about being a not-so-small runner? I’m pretty slow. Now, I know – “slow” is relative. To some people, my 11/12:00ish mile pace might seem fast. But trust me, in the racing community (especially the smaller races I do locally), that’s not fast. In fact I finished last in a local race once. Dead last. (Which kinda sucked at the time, but now is just a funny memory. And now that it’s happened, I’m not scared of it happening again. I finished last. So what?)

So, yeah, I’m a chubby runner. But should I have been offended by what that guy said to me in the grocery store?

Hell, no.

You know why? Because I still do it. Knowing that some days, I’d rather sit on the couch and drink Coke and eat ice cream instead of running, I still get my fat ass up and go do it. Knowing that my “stats” that show up on Facebook when I post my runs could be laughable to the more fit runners that see them, I just go on and post them anyway. Knowing that I have fat rolls that show up in running pics from races, I post the hell out of them anyway.

I am not trying to be skinny. I’m not trying to be perfect. I’m trying to be strong. I’m trying to be a motivator, both to others and to myself. I’m trying to show others that finding something you love as much as I love running can change you. And you don’t have to fit a certain mold or look a certain way or be a certain speed to get out there and do it anyway.

This morning, I lost a running friend. She was the brightest ray of sunshine you’d ever meet in your life. In February of this year Tammy was still running half marathons and signing up for full marathons later in the year. And then today, August 14, six short months later, she’s just gone. Just like that. She lost her battle to a cancer she hadn’t even known she’d had until just recently.

I keep thinking about her. I keep thinking about her spunk. Her smile. Her laugh. I keep thinking about how much she adored running. I keep thinking about the last race we ran together. It was an unseasonably hot half marathon at the end of October. She was well ahead of me for most of the race, as usual. But with only about two miles to go, my heart just gave up. I couldn’t run a step longer. I stopped and started walking. And, to my surprise, I saw Tammy just ahead of me as I rounded a corner. She was walking too. Once she saw that I was behind her, she stopped dead still in the road, not caring about her time, and waited for me to catch up. We walked the last two miles together. She smiled and laughed and chatted the whole way, knowing that neither of us would have any kind of finishing time to brag about, yet not letting it bother her a bit. We were going to finish and that’s all that mattered to her.

That is what I’m going to carry forward with me. That determination and strength and knowledge that I may not be the best, but I am there. I am moving forward. Every step I take is taking me closer to the person I want to be. Like Tammy, I am learning to be happy to just be there. To just be a part of the process. To be a participant in this game of life and to enjoy every single second of it so that I leave behind a legacy like she did.

Am I going to let a snarky comment from some guy in a grocery store change that? No, sir, I am NOT. And I hope you won’t either. Don’t ever – EVER – let someone else determine who or what you should be. Get out there and do whatever you want to do and do it proudly. Live your life out loud. Do what you think you can’t do and shout it out from the mountaintops.

And when you run into the grocery store acquaintances of the world? Just tell them to get back on the sidelines of life and continue to watch you shine.

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have my 9th half and second full marathons to train for.

***

“Go fast enough to get there, but slow enough to see.”
– Jimmy Buffet

Posted by Melissa Edmondson. Categories: Running. Tags: clydesdale division, overweight, races, runner, running, skinny, stereotypes, strong, typical, women runners. 12 Comments

Jun. ’15

Epilogue

“The greatest test of courage on earth is to bear defeat without losing heart.”
– Robert Green Ingersoll

So, I wrote a blog last week. It was about a race I ran. But it wasn’t just any ole race, mind you. It was a race in which I finished…DEAD LAST.

Now, I struggled with whether I should hit the little “publish” button when I was finished, but in the end decided to go ahead and bite the bullet. I blog plenty about the great moments in my life, so I figured it was time to blog about one of the not-so-great. Time for a little honesty, ya know? A little humility. How would it be received? I didn’t know. But I did know that I was putting myself out there for public embarrassment. And yet, somehow, I didn’t seem to care. I felt like I had something to say, and so I said it.

So, what happened? How was it received?

Hunter’s Heroes race – Mile 9

I was blown away (to put it mildly) by the response. It has been viewed almost 8,000 times now and shared and posted over 1,000 times. A women’s running site featured it. Many running groups on Facebook shared it and a few even contacted me requesting me to join. I was contacted by runners all over the world who thanked me for being the voice of so many “back-of-the-packers.” I was even contacted by one person who ran the actual race I was blogging about. He was one of the first finishers and admitted that, even up there in the front of the pack, he felt so many of the things that I felt too.

Wow. I’m in awe. All this time, I’ve been trying to do awesome things so I could blog about them – and it turns out that blogging about a “failure” is what ended up resonating the loudest. Who knew!? I guess suffering through misery and embarrassment and then rising back up to tell about it maybe isn’t quite what you’d call “failure” after all. (I think a lot of us need that reminder every now and then in our lives – we don’t give ourselves enough credit for all the times that tends to be the case.)

So I decided it was time for a little epilogue. What happened to that runner who finished last in that race? Did she ever run again?

Yep. She sure did.

Just before the start of the MOJE race (Mount Jefferson is behind me.)

In fact – only 6 short days after that race, I ran a race called the MOJE. This is a 6.6 mile race, in which 3.3 of those miles are straight up a mountain. (The other 3.3 are back down – but I probably didn’t have to clarify that.) MOJE is short for Mount Jefferson – which is a 1,342-foot climb. (Add 100 more feet to that for the training I did because I thought the course went even further – leave it to me to make a hard thing even harder!)

Now, I’m not going to lie. That MOJE race was front and center on my mind as I finished last in the race less than a week prior. I remember thinking there was no way I was actually going to do that race. I was going to show up, get my shirt, and leave. Now, I’ve never actually done that before, but this time was going to be an exception. No mountain climbing for a last place race finisher, sheesh. What was I thinking? I couldn’t hang with the big dogs. Was I insane?

But, like it always does, time healed the sting of that last-place finish and by the time the MOJE rolled around, I knew I could do it. I trained. I trained hard. And now, I had learned what it felt like to be last. I already knew that being last was not the most horrible thing in the world that could happen. I survived – big deal. And I would survive this one.

I wasn’t last in the MOJE, but I was close. And you know what, who cares? As the faster runners were making their way down the mountain while I was still hoofing it up, I got more “good job”s and high fives than I could count from them as they passed by. This was the friendliest race I’ve ever been a part of. And I finally…FINALLY…earned one of the coveted MOJE race t-shirts. (And we all know I only do races for the t-shirts. I’ll pretty much do anything for a t-shirt, but that’s a blog for another day…)

You know, I ran my first full marathon back in November and I can honestly tell you that I was just as proud (if not prouder) of myself after I finished this mountain race as I was of that one. Not only because it was tough (and that’s an understatement!) but because it followed a time in my life when I could have easily given up, yet chose to keep going instead. Like my shirt says in my race finish photo, I made the choice to keep moving.

And I’m so glad I did.

And that, my dear friends, is what it’s all about. Truly.

MOJE finish line. Time: 1:21:31

***

“Never confuse a single defeat with a final defeat.”
– F. Scott Fitzgerald

Posted by Melissa Edmondson. Categories: Running. Tags: blog, blogging, change, changed, half marathon, health, heart, hills, hunter's heroes, inspiration, inspirational, last place finish, marathon, moje, motivation, motivational, mount jefferson, mountain, performance, photos, problems, Quotes, race, run, runner, running, running shirts, women runners, writer, writing. 4 Comments

Nov. ’13

Mayberry Half Marathon

“The obsession with running is really an obsession with the potential for more and more life.”
– George Sheehan

Second half marathon = *check!*
Goal time met = *check!* (Well, my goal was 2:30 and it ended up being 2:30:44. Those last 44 seconds don’t count, right?)
PR = *check!* (My first half marathon took 2:43)
Miserable pain in legs and hips afterwards? = *DOUBLE CHECK!*

So, today, I completed my second half marathon in Mount Airy, North Carolina. It was called the “Mayberry Half Marathon.” Yep, that Mayberry. If you aren’t familiar with the area, this is the town that the Andy Griffith show was based on. And buddy, let me tell ya, they sure use that as a draw to the area! (As they should.) You can see everything from Wally’s Service Garage to Floyd’s Barber Shop. Pretty cool stuff.

So, my day started with a 4:15 a.m. alarm. (Whaaat? Seriously? I’m getting up at 4:15 a.m. to go make myself miserable??? Yep. Welcome to being a runner.) And not only did I get up at 4:15 a.m., but so did my boyfriend and his kids to come along and be my cheerleaders. If you’re a runner, you know how very much this means to us. Yes, we’re running for ourselves and it’s a very private, personal sport, but when it comes to races, there’s nothing like a cheerleader. And I had three. His kids had the option of staying home, but they chose to go to support me. Talk about warm fuzzies. 🙂 They’re just as sweet as their dad.

So, after our 2+ hour trip to Mount Airy, I get all signed in and get my sweet shirt. (I was also given the shirt and goody bag – complete with running socks (super sweeeet!) for my Australian friend Zoe who earned hers as well from across the world. Read that blog here if you missed it!) So, I’m checking out my awesome long-sleeved silky moisture wicking shirt and suddenly I notice this little phrase written up the arm.

Um. Say what?

Now, although I don’t live “too” far from Mount Airy (about two hours away), I wasn’t extremely familiar with the terrain. And let me just say…. Holy. Cow. They weren’t kidding. The hills were insane! I started out thinking this was going to be a pretty chill course. I love looking at the little smile on my innocent, unassuming face as I took off from the start line. That smile started fading right about the 8 mile mark as my legs started screaming at me that this was the worst, stupid, most idiotic idea I had ever had in my life. And I couldn’t help but agree with them. Yes, the course was beautiful, but who the heck cared!? I was too busy looking down at my legs to be sure they were still there because the numbness was starting to make me doubt that fact.

“Oh, dear God, please let me finish this thing. I’ll do anything you say from now on. Scout’s honor.” (I was never a scout and God knows that, so I’m sure he realized I was just kidding.)

But alas, scout or no, God followed through and allowed me to cross the finish line. Barely. Nah, I’m exaggerating. Without knowing what the course was like, I had hoped for a 2:30 finish and I finished in pretty much exactly that. 2:30:44. (As I mentioned before, those 44 seconds totally don’t count. I was right at 2:30, so I’m going with that. Bam!)

Note the distinct difference in my face from before the race to after. Ha!

Am I proud of myself? You bet I am. Why? Well, lots of reasons. One – I finished. Two – I started. Three – I got this awesome medal…

(There’s that mention of hills again! This time I knew why!)

But aside from all that stuff, you know the deeper, more real reasons that I’m proud?

“Running is not, as it so often seems, only about what you did in your last race or about how many miles you ran last week. It is, in a much more important way, about community, about appreciating all the miles run by other runners, too.”
– Richard O’Brien

Keeping that quote in mind – here’s one of those reasons.

That picture is the result of my friend Zoe’s half marathon that she ran, in part, because of me. Our training together for the last few months led her to run her first half marathon all on her own in Australia. Together, we helped each other get to this point, and she SMASHED it! I’m so proud of her. And I’m proud of myself for helping to inspire one other person out there in the world to feel this intense feeling of pride in herself. There’s nothing like setting out to complete a goal, and completing it. There’s a strength there that can’t be explained. But trust me – it’s good stuff.

And on that same note: I also got to witness a couple success stories at the race itself. I spoke to one woman just before the race who was telling me that she was unsure if she would even be able to run. She had trained hard and had started experiencing some serious pain in her hips and knees just a week or so ago. The pain wouldn’t ease. She said she was just going to do a little warm up and then make her decision whether to follow through with the race. This conversation occurred in the bathroom line just prior to the race, and I lost her after that. Throughout the race, I thought of her and wondered if she had been able to do the race at all. At the awards ceremony, I got my answer. She finished THIRD OVERALL. How do you like that!? I felt so proud of her it was almost like I knew her personally. And that’s another reason why I love being a runner. We are as proud of each other’s accomplishments as we are of our own – even when we barely know the person.

I spoke to another guy who was completing his 11th half marathon of the year. One per month. And he was from Nashville, TN, and is planning to run the Music City Marathon in April – the same one that I’ve got my sights set on for my own first full marathon. Eh, we’ll see. My legs still hurt too much right now to make that decision. But either way – small world. I just love the conversations that take place among runners. We’re a family of sorts. We get each other. And we all see each other as equals – whether we finished 1st or 120th. That’s one of the most beautiful things about this sport in my eyes.

And finally, to wrap it all up. You know what really, really, makes me love these races? This.

I am so lucky to have my biggest fan by my side through it all. He is always, always there. With an encouraging word and a congratulatory kiss, he is part of the reason for my success. Yes, I believe in myself – and I know that is the reason why I keep progressing. But to have someone believing in you along the way? That sure does add to the sweetness of the whole thing. I’m so incredibly blessed. I hope he knows how important that is to me. I’m in a women’s running group on Facebook and I hear of so many stories that don’t always work out this way. So many significant others don’t understand what it’s all about. And without the understanding, they don’t follow through with the support and the encouragement that these women so desperately need. I saw one woman mention that she has done everything she can think of to show her husband how much running means to her. She has posted her bibs and medals on their bedroom wall – begged him to come to races – and still. Nothing. I feel so bad for her. Support from our loved ones is a gift that we eagerly open like a kid on Christmas morning. I am so sorry for the women like her who have nothing to open. Thank goodness she has that women’s running group on Facebook. Hopefully it can put a little salve on her wounds as she receives the virtual back pats from those of us who understand.

But for the grace of God go I, man. I’m tellin ya.

So. Half marathon #2 is in the books. I’m a happy camper. Another success to tuck under my belt…..until next time. 🙂

Thanks for joining me on the journey. And if you haven’t started your own journey, my request to you is this. Start today. It’s out there. There is something that is going to make you feel the pride in yourself that running has allowed me to feel. You need it. Trust me on this. You need it.

Find it. And don’t stop searching until you do.

***

“Racing teaches us to challenge ourselves. It teaches us to push beyond where we thought we could go. It helps us to find out what we are made of. This is what we do. This is what it’s all about.”
– Patti Sue Plumer, U. S. Olympian