How I Earned An Ultra Marathon Finishers Metal Without Leaving My Backyard

How does a formerly obese mom who was always the chubby and fat kid, who never played sports and was embarrassed in gym class as a kid, who could barely walk a mile over 4 years ago without gasping for air and feeling achy—how does she earn runner’s metals? Well, there are those live 5Ks I’m starting to do with my kids. But, now with virtual races, anyone can compete and participate in a race without leaving your treadmill—or in my case the backyard.

I’m a regular person. I have a family and work full time as a special education teacher. I have a lot of responsibilities, including raising three wonderful children who have various special needs. I make time to do some food prepping and work out. But I cannot devote an exorbitant amount of time training as an athlete. I’m still a slow runner. With various virtual running programs that now exist, I could not only run a 5K at home sometimes but I can do a cumulative marathon or Ultra Marathon where I can run the race in a week or a few weeks in between my many responsibilities.

Sure, it’s not the same great feat as those who do it in a day or two and I have great respect for them. But just because I’m not in a place in life or have the great athletic ability where I can do it the same way, doesn’t mean I can’t do it my way and achieve the satisfaction of logging in enough miles to have reached many marathons.

Basically meet yourself where you are, work with what you have, and don’t have an all or nothing attitude (if I can’t run a Marathon in one session then why bother try to log in cumulative miles to equal one?).

And this, my friends is how I ended up with the latest medal and t-shirt—59.5 Miles, The Road To Hanna that came in the mail today. My kids think it’s so cool and congratulated me on my hard work. I couldn’t make it to Brazil but when I logged my running miles Yes.Fit sent me Google earth images showing me where I would be if I could have traveled.

#BackyardRunner

#Grateful

#PlantBasedGodsGrace