My Fitness Story So Far...

I was by no means an athletic kid.  I lacked (still do) coordination and was not very strong physically.  I did walk a lot though, and in my era, we played outside not in front of of a screen. In other words, I was walking to the mall every Saturday with my friends, but I was not on the soccer team.  As a matter of fact, I actually failed gym in high school four times!

I may have failed gym because I was at the beach though. :)

When I was about 20, I watched the original infomercial for Billy Blank's TaeBo and was sold.  I started doing TaeBo twice a day.  Then I started running, not on purpose, but when my BFF asked me to do a race with her I thought it'd be something fun to do just the once; however, after that race (Corporate Challenge), I continued running even if it wasn't on a consistent basis.I was doing random races and it was more as a social outings than anything else.  Eventually,  in 2003 I committed to my first marathon with Team in Training.  It was a huge training commitment and it was an amazing experience.  I did it again in 2007 as a mom and the training commitment was much more difficult , obviously due to time constraints and run of the mill "Mom guilt."  This coming Monday I will begin training for my third marathon.

Marathon #1

Marathon #2

 In the last year or so, I also have become much more involved in the fitness lifestyle.  I became a part of this amazing blogging community, have been doing challenging obstacle course races and studying to become a personal trainer.  It is definitely a struggle to balance my time between my training, studying, work and oh yea, my amazing family.  People often tell me that they don't get how/why I can manage all of these things?  The truth is that I don't have a choice.  This is just who I am.  Don't get me wrong, I wish there were a few more hours in the day, but even if there were, I'd likely use them for a million other things besides sleep.  So, when people ask me how do you find the time and energy to workout? I ask them how do you not?

How could you not want to do mountain climbers on a Saturday morning in the run? :)

I work out most days.  On any given day, it could be in the morning or at lunch, and occasionally in the evening.  It's all about flexibility and compromise.  If you want something, you have to make it happen.  Like I tell my son, "nothing worthwhile is easy".  I don't love getting up at 5 a.m. to work out, but I love how I feel when I know I started my day on the right note.  People love to tell me that they want to lose weight or tone up and then give me 100 reasons why they can't.  No time, no money, bad back, kids, work, blah, blah, blah.  I only hope that each of these people get through their own excuses and find the joy in loving their body and treating it right and when they are ready, I'll be here for them.

My ultimate goal as a certified personal trainer I will be to help people find the happiness that I find in sweat and hard work. I know that there will always be a struggle and that I will always have to find a  compromise, but as long as the benefits are for my health and happiness, it'll be worth it. At this point what I'm most certain of is that after this marathon, I will likely find another challenge to take on  so, the journey continues.

The journey to find more reasons to wear a tutu :)