Run, Annie, Run!

I may have mentioned once or twice or – okayfinedamnit – a gazillion times on here that I still have some weight to lose after becoming a mom twice over.

Lately I have been trying to achieve my goals through exercise.  I found a Y near us that offers up to 2 hours of free child care a day.  (Yes, obviously sometimes I just drop them off and actually sprint next door and read trashy magazines and do tequila shots for two hours at a dive bar and then sprint back so that I at least look a little sweaty.  Wouldn’t you?)

In any event, I usually stick to my trusty cardio kickboxing classes, elliptical and weight machines.  Sometimes I’ll kick it old school with a step class.  Shockingly, I have yet to try the mommy mecca of all classes: Zumba.  I do want to, but the line to get a ticket to get into class overwhelms me.

Plus, I tend to fight trends that are aimed exactly at my demographic.  I didn’t purchase a pair of low-rise jeans until well into my sophomore year of college.

Something you will likely never find me doing at the gym?  Running.

The only place you are less likely to find me than a treadmill is a yoga studio.   Shoot me.

My aversion to treadmills could have something to do with the emotional scars I still carry from flying off of one when I was twelve, but I don’t think so.  Although getting caught in your walk man wires, stopping to untangle – while the treadmill continues to speed along, and promptly being whipped off into the wall is embarrassing.  Truly.

I honestly just never liked running that much.

However, something about seeing constant Facebook updates for all of the trillions of races my friends do finally inspired me:

I decided I wanted to do a 5k over Thanksgiving weekend.  I enlisted the other 30-somethings who will be around this weekend and we decided we will either enter one or make up our own.

Suddenly, I realized I hadn’t run in oh…years.  [Insert Fat Mommy Joke here about ‘Unless you count running to the __________ store for chocolate ______________!’  Ehhhyyohhhh!]

So I went to the gym yesterday and ran a 5k on the treadmill.  You know, just to double check that attempting it this weekend wouldn’t make me vomit and die.

About 5 seconds in I remembered another reason I am not so fond of running:  I currently jiggle more than Ol’ Saint Nick himself.  ‘Twasn’t pretty.

But I didn’t stop.

Listen, if I can push out two human beings who have ‘Horcasitas – size’ heads (no offense, family) with no drugs whatsoever, I can do this.  (Yes, I am pretty certain the whole point of having a natural birth is to drop it casually in stories like this and give yourself a pat on the back.  They didn’t give out any gold stars at the hospital so I will have to create my own glory.)

And today, even though my butt feels like I did three Buns of Steel videos in a row, I am feeling pretty good about myself.  The older I get, the more I find myself just doing things, rather than attempting things.   I tend to not let people or things get in my way as much as I did even a few years ago.

And that feels so good.

Honestly, it feels even better than just randomly running a 5k at the gym on a Tuesday as a chubby mom of two.  And that feeling is pretty hard to top.