Parkrun - a great way to get fit and stay fit

Had to share this story, you can see it and others at www.parkrun.com.au...

‘I Run!’ by Chrys Stevenson

As I stood at the starting line of the Golden Beach parkrun with 150 other runners, I thought to myself, “How the hell did I get myself into this?” Less than two years ago I was a proud couch potato. I weighed 129 kg and wore size 24 jeans. I was a keen equestrian in my teen years, but I never ran – not even as a child. Sports days at high school were spent in “Detention Room C” as I refused to participate in physical activities. I called myself a ‘conscientious objector’! In August 2013, after more than two decades as an obese adult, I decided it was time to shed the fat suit. Now in my mid-50s, I had reconnected with a man I dated in my 20s. He made no demands upon me to lose weight, but I decided my body no longer reflected how I felt about myself. It was time to change. As a skeptic, I rejected fad diets, elimination diets, expensive weight loss programs and home-delivered frozen foods. Instead I determined that weight loss was a simple matter of mathematics: burn more calories than you eat. I modified (rather than revolutionised) my diet, reduced portion sizes, filled my oversized wine glass with soda water or Diet Coke instead of Sauvignon Blanc and joined the local gym. I committed to doing some kind of exercise every day; walking, swimming, light weights - even gardening. The kilos quickly melted off and my fitness level improved. I maintained a steady weight-loss of 1kg per week; I was regularly walking 5km and could swim 25 laps of the Olympic pool. I was no athlete but I was fitter than I’d ever been in my life. Once I reached my goal weight, my gym trainer encouraged me to run. Run? I couldn’t run! Was he mad? At first I ran with all the grace of a tranquilised giraffe. But, soon, I fell into a rhythm. It wasn’t long before I graduated from running half the length of the gym’s carpark to a gentle 850m jog into the local village – and then, back! By now I had shed a massive 65 kg – half my original body weight! I’d gone from Size 24 to Size 10-12. My weight-loss goal achieved, my trainer urged me to set a new challenge. I decided I’d try to run 5 km without stopping by Easter 2015. I wrote it in texta and pinned it to the notice board in the gym. I hadn’t yet run 5 km. The best I’d achieved was 3.9. Could I go the distance? I didn’t know. A chance meeting on Facebook with a parkrunner from South Africa alerted me to the Golden Beach parkrun. It seemed like a good chance to achieve my goal. Perhaps running with others would give me the extra adrenaline boost I needed to run that extra kilometre. “Go!” yelled the event director and I took off in the middle of the pack. Soon, the fastest runners began passing me. Then people who were clearly older and (ahem) larger than me trotted past, followed by people with dogs, ladies with prams and (oh, the humiliation) seven year old children! At one point I looked behind me and there was no-one there. I was dead last of the runners. It did occur to me to pull out there and then and save myself the embarrassment of finishing last, but I decided there was more disgrace in not completing the course. So, I kept on at my slow, but steady pace; a tortoise amongst a leap of hares. I reached the half way point and looped back on the home run. Now (as someone at my gym had promised me) I began passing some of the runners who’d started too fast and were running out of puff. That spurred me on - not only could I run, I could pass people! I finished the course having maintained the same steady 8 km/hour pace throughout. I was slow, but I didn’t stop or walk once. “38 minutes and 44 seconds!” yelled the time-keeper as I crossed the finish line and the crowd applauded and shouted, “Well done!” I was reminded of the t-shirt that reads, “I run. I’m slower than a herd of turtles stampeding through peanut butter, but I run!” I run! Who knew I could do that? Now I’m thinking, “Maybe I could run a bit faster …”