The Fat Kid in Gym Class

For about the past 9 weeks, my cousin and I have been training for a 5K.  Those of you who know me personally or follow me on Facebook or Twitter are probably pretty sick of hearing about it by now, and for that I'm sorry.  It's just that talking about it a lot makes me accountable to, well, the world, because if I back out I have to announce to everyone that I didn't do it. 

You see, I was (and still am) always the fat kid in gym class.  As a kid, I never showed much interest in organized sports or outdoor activities.  I was more of the nerdy book-reader type.  So I never learned how to challenge my body, how to push myself physically, how to go beyond what I felt was possible for my body to accomplish.  When I hit middle school and gym became compulsory, when "dressing out" became a curse word in my vocabulary, this was a conundrum for me.  Here I was, straight A student, getting C's in gym because I couldn't pass the Presidential physical fitness test.  When it came to the written bowling test, I was an ace in the hole.  I knew all the rules of soccer, or enough so that I could get an A+ on the multiple choice exam.  But unfortunately, that only accounted for a minimal percentage of the total PE grade.  Me getting a C in 7th grade gym sent me to the school counselor in a mini-hysteria, since the idea of ruining my perfect GPA over not being able to run the mile was a complete shock to my perfectionist mentality. 

From that point on, I pretty much embraced the idea that me + sports = unhappiness, so I did whatever I had to to get by in gym, until after 10th grade and it wasn't require any longer.  Tenth grade signaled the end of me ever being physically challenged by an entity outside of myself.  It wasn't that I didn't want to be physically fit.  I wanted to keep up with the pack as they ran laps around the track.  But the cruelty of teenage kids, coupled with a strong sense of pubescent worthlessness, made it easier to just give up.  Climb the rope?  No thanks.  Take the pull-up test?  Are you kidding me?  What, do ya want me to pull my arms out of their sockets?  Refusing to participate was easier than trying and failing. 

Even then, though, I longed to be a runner.  My brother was a great cross country runner.  My two aunts that I looked up to so highly were marathon runners.  One of them even carried the Olympic torch!  And from the time I was young, I had helped them at the annual "Rotary Ramble," a 5K that they sponsored that was pretty much the main event in the annual calendar of their small town.  I had passed out t-shirts to runners and helped hundreds of runners register for the race, all the while wistfully wishing that somehow I could participate. 

Post-college I decided that working out was important, so I got a gym membership and have pretty much belonged to a gym consistently since then.  I go to the gym in spurts.  For three months I'm committed to working out, and then something happens (like vacation) to interrupt my routine, thereby resulting in me reverting back to old habits.  I've never pushed myself to do something that I felt was physically beyond my ability, though. 

In early December, I was thinking about getting in shape, and I decided to do it.  I would run a 5K.  Instead of being the one volunteering at the event, I would be the one registering and receiving the t-shirt.  I asked a few friends to train with me because I knew I'd need the support. 

So here I am.  Nine weeks later, training for my 5K that is in little over a month.  I've pushed myself physically more than I ever thought I could.  More than the physical challenge is the mental one.  Because although my body mostly says, "Wow, this sucks, but we can do it," in the hard times of training, my mind is often louder.  In those really tough parts of the run, my middle school brain tends to come to the forefront, reminding me how ridiculous it is to try to run when I'm just the fat kid in gym class, telling me how silly I look and how pointless this is.  It's in those times that I literally have to talk to myself out loud!  If you've ever been around me at the lakefront when I'm running, you probably have thought that I'm a schizo weirdo, but please understand, I'm just cheering myself on so that the voices outside become louder than the inside middle school ones.

In one month, this fat kid from gym class will cross the finish line of her first 5K.  Yep, I said first, signifying that it won't be my last.  When I cross the finish line, I'll probably laugh.  Or maybe cry.  I'm not sure yet, since finishing isn't something that I ever did in middle school gym.  Whatever it feels like, however I react, I know that that day, when I cross the finish line, the fat kid will officially be put to rest.  I anxiously anticipate her funeral.  :-)