Gold Nugget

My knees, which are well known for being grumpy when running/biking/hiking/essentially doing anything of distance, were hurting, but I pushed on. The pavement was on a downhill slop at that point and all I had to do was keep moving my feet forward. Gravity would take it from there and do the rest. A quarter of a mile and two quick turns later I found myself running down the finishers chute, just seconds away from finishing my first triathlon. 

Less than two hours earlier I was standing in a line of some 1600 other women in nothing but a tight spandex tri suite and swim cap pained like a sugar skull waiting for my turn to start. I was thinking about what ever possessed me to think that any of this was a good idea. Only two words kept coming to mind. Happy & fat.

Happy fat. Also known to some as that 'little' bit of weight one acquires at the beginning of a relationship, when you start filling your time with Netflix binges and dinners out with your significant other when it used to be filled with  trips to the gym after work and sleepless runs at midnight. Getting married, moving to Alaska, changing jobs, were not the only lifestyle changes that took place for me last year. I also went from clean eating to adopting the more free eating habits of my husband and opting to skip most of my trips to the gym to hang with my beloved on the couch watching movies. While I don't regret the time we've spent together doing these things, I have been watching in horror as my body has also decided it was going to do some changing of its own as a result of these new [sometimes bad] habits. One day during the miserable, snowless winter (which DID NOT help. I love playing in the snow, but when there is none and only coldness, I'm not motivated to get myself outside) I decided I'd had enough. So I convinced my friend Cally to sign up for a local, all women's triathlon with me. 

We've spent the last couple of months training, which brought me to crossing the finish line of my very first triathlon. Sure, I'm not back at my desired weight, but the process was fun and the experience was far more rewarding than numbers on a scale. Perhaps this isn't my last tri either. I guess time will tell...