Folds

When I was 25 I had a quarterlife crisis of sorts. I felt that nothing that I was doing in life was making any difference in the world. I wanted to do something big. I wanted to do something that might actually change my life. So I made the decision to run a marathon. Statistically only about 2% of people in the world complete a marathon. I didn't know this fact until I finished, but it's still pretty impressive. I picked my route, I found a training group, and I began the process. For about 5 months of my life, my Saturday mornings consisted of waking up anywhere from 5-7 am and heading down to the running trail to meet my group for our long runs. It started out simple enough, with a light 5 mile jog. Learning how to pace and how to break up your running with some walking mixed in to help your endurance. Once we got to 20 miles, our long runs went backwards. For those of you who don't know, if you can run 20 miles straight, you can run a marathon. Experts tell you not to run more than that before the big day. The point of me telling this story is the following. Needless to say, after all that running I felt that I was in pretty good shape. I worked out 6 days a week with a rest on Fridays (and sometimes Sundays). Although I wasn't really lifting weights, or watching what I was eating, I was still doing a ton of cardio during the week so I could blow through food pretty quickly. I was dating this guy at the time and we decided to take a trip down to Texas to hang out for the weekend with two of my favorite people on earth. Since it was the summer, we had decided to go out on the boat. I'm not one to go around flaunting my stuff in a bikini around the guy I'm dating, but I figured, I was training for a marathon. I was already feeling good, I know I have to look good, right. Well, as I'm making the big reveal, I decide to sit down. We are on a boat after all. And after 4 months of training and feeling good about my accomplishments, good ole Gay Steve looks at me and says, "You can really tell that you've been working out. You have less rolls than you used too". If the whole world was doing what was going on in my head I think the earth stopped rotating. The three of us just looked at him, in pure shock. I wasn't sure if I was mad, b/c I lost all feeling. Bo (husband) says, "did you really just say that?". To which Laura responds, "Do you think that was a compliment?" Now this happened YEARS ago, so maybe the conversation didn't go exactly like that. And maybe me punching him in the face where he flipped over backwards and fell overboard and drowned right there while we drove the boat over him didn't happen either. Like I said it was a while ago, but it obviously sticks with me and not in the negative sense. It actually makes me giggle when I look in the mirror to notice my changes and say to myself, wow Katherine, you don't have as many folds as you used too.