Zero to Half Marathon in 13 months

Hi everyone!
I've been waiting for feel like a success to post my story and it didn't feel right on the one year of joining MFP or on the day I logged for my 365th day in a row a few weeks later, but now it feels like time.

I'm a "always been heavy" girl who was the artsy type growing up, not the athlete. In fact I was the girl in the 9th grade who tried to log a complaint that making us run a "whole mile" qualified as cruel and unusual.

Fast forward to my adult life where I've been up and down and had couple of gos of joining gyms and what not but I was generally happy about myself and didn't worry too much about my weight until last summer when I saw some unflattering pictures of me, combined with hitting my all time high weight after losing some while pregnant with my second child and knowing if I didn't do something, I was just going to get bigger and I didn't want that. My husband had lost some weight using MFP and I do all the cooking so I created an account to help him log his food and for some reason, it all just clicked.

I lost 10 pounds in the first and then I stalled, losing 2 pounds in the next two months. In the beginning, I looked at the forums to see if you could do it with diet alone and it looked like you could, so that's what I was doing. I had all the usually excuses. A stay-at-home mom with two young kids, I didn't have the time, I didn't want to join a gym, ect, ect. But after being stuck, I was so frustrated so one night in October, I laced up my shoes and went for a walk. And I did it the next night and again the night after that. By the end of the week, a good song came up on shuffle and it made me want to run tot he end of the block. So I did. And the next time, I did three of those little sprints.

I started my own version of C25k. Two laps around my neighborhood was exactly 3.1 miles so I picked three landmarks and when I got to those, I would run just a tiny bit farther than I did the last time and then walk to the next landmark and do two laps around the neighborhood like that. It took until Valentine's Day for me to run the full 5k, but I was so proud of myself!

It wasn't long before I wanted to run farther so I the weekends, I started going four then five then six miles. In April, I decided at the last minute to run my first race, a 10k and I finished in 1:01:22.

Shortly after that, I set my sights on a small, local half-marathon in September and even though it seemed so far away, I started up with my training. And I can say that it didn't go as planned. Due to a groin pull and some family stuff, I missed my last two long runs and I had to cut the one before that short due to the heat.

Two weeks before the race, I almost gave up. I wasn't prepared and I didn't feel like I could do it. I called my brother, the runner, and asked him, hoping that it would tell me to try for the next one. But he didn't. He told me to go for it.

So last Saturday, was a wonderful break from the heat we've been having and a beautiful morning for a run. My leg wasn't 100% but it was better and I went for it! I started slow to test my leg out and got faster and faster as the race went on, steadily passing people as I went. My last mile was almost two minutes faster than the first! I'm very proud to report that I finished, without walking, in 2:21.53.


And there you have it! In 13 months, I have lost 40 pounds and gone from a size 18 to a size 12 and am now at about the smallest I've ever been as an adult and I have no intention of stopping. But SO much more important than the numbers on the scales is what I've gained by finding an activity that I really love and by obtaining what would have been impossible for me to even consider a year ago. And so many of my friends are following my lead and getting healthier and getting active and it feels really great to be an inspiration to them.

So, thank you if you read my rambling. I guess my bottom line is: it's really easy to get caught up in pounds and inches while measuring success. My challenge to you is to pick something that you want to do: run a race, climb a mountain, Zumba 'till you drop, it doesn't matter what, and DO IT! You might surprise yourself.