Why I chose to run a marathon

When you are Fat life is full of things you can’t do…

You can’t buy cake without feeling like people are judging you
You often can’t touch your toes
You can’t find a decent pair of jeans to fit
You can’t squeeze through a crowd to get to the bar too easily
You can’t fit into an airplane seat comfortably

The list is endless.

And aside from the things you really can’t do (and they are of course different for each person), there is also a whole heap of “can’t do” energy placed upon us by others.

People don’t invite you to some physical things cos they fear you might not be up for it, people don’t ask to borrow your clothes (unless they are pregnant), people don’t want you in their pictures incase you make them look bad.

Ok now this post is sounding quite negative, cos of course this doesn’t happen all the time.

But at times as a Fat person, it is easy to get into the mindset where you feel like the world is judging you for what you can’t do, without even knowing if you can do it or not. It’s back to that being chosen last in PE scenario again.

So a massive part of me signing up to do a marathon was simply to prove people wrong about me and my capabilities…and these days I enjoy nothing more than throwing it into conversation for effect.

So why not a 5k or 10k, or even a half marathon. NO! I had to join the 1% of the worlds population who have run a marathon, so I feel like an elite in some way.

I sometimes make light of the training I did in the lead up to my 2012 marathon, saying it wasn’t that tough…well of course it was. But every training run brought me closer to my goals and closer to becoming a can do kinda girl

Moving across the starting line on a crisp but bright spring morning at the London Marathon (and I suppose most marathons) is the most surreal thing. I remember saying to myself. “You are really doing this ju” but even then I wondered if I would actually finish it. Crossing the finish line is equally as strange, especially when you are coming in at least 2 hours after most of the “proper runners” have finished. It can be a real anticlimax especially if you can’t find loved ones anywhere.

You walk (ok hobble) around in a daze with your medal repeating the same thing over and over in your head, ” I did it, I ran a marathon, I really did it”

That buzz never dies, at times you feel like it is impossible to ever do one again and you think that maybe it was all a dream after-all and it didn’t really happen. But it did.

I ran my first marathon to prove to other people and myself that I CAN, my next marathon I am running because I know I CAN…and I’m even confident enough to say I know I CAN run it faster too!!

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