Look What I Did...

O.M.G....look what I just did....

Dear Kim Hatcher, Congratulations, you have made the COMMITMENT and are registered for the 2013 Nationwide Children's Hospital Columbus Marathon & 1/2 Marathon!  Yup. I signed up for the HALF marathon today! Crazy, right??  Well, I've been struggling to get back on track all year. It took me until the end of March to start to feel human again after the horrible Crohn's flare of 2013 (it was really 2012, but since I didn't end up in the hospital until this year I'll just call it 2013). After starting to feel human again, I decided that I needed to get back on track so that I could lose the weight I was gaining (due to emotional eating and steroids...bad combination) and gain back the fitness I had lost!  As you know from my previous posts, this has continued to be a struggle all year. In April I started running again and was doing pretty well. However, we then started a project to re-do our patio, and I stopped doing any other forms of exercise. But trust me, I was still working out. That patio was some serious work.  But it's so pretty now, right?!?! Then the patio project ended and once again I found myself struggling to get back on track. The first week of the patio project I actually lost almost 5lbs! I was tracking my food using Weight Watchers and since I was burning a ton of calories doing physical labor for 7 hours a day, I was still able to eat a ton. Makes it pretty easy to feel like I'm back on track. But, in reality I wasn't since when the patio was done I still was eating like I was doing physical labor 7 hours a day!  A few weeks ago the Columbus Marathon posted the race medals and shirts for this year's race. I was mad (not really) because both the medals and shirts are much cooler than last year! I thought...how cool would it have been for me to be doing my first marathon this year! Well, not cool at all actually since that would mean I wouldn't have been able to do it as a result of my illness. Duh!  Then one day when my SIL and I were together she asked if I saw the medals for the Columbus Marathon this year. She then asked if I wanted to do the half. I told her that I was thinking about it, but was not sure that I could get to 13.1 by October.  Of course that means that I then started to look into how many weeks away the race was and what kind of training program I might be able to do in that amount of time. I made a training plan starting with my long run being only 3 miles. I quickly saw that 14 weeks would theoretically be plenty of time to get to 13.1.  I still wasn't confident that I could do it though. I am now in week 3 of training and I'm feeling much better. Clearly I'm feeling more confident since today I decided to just do it and register. No better way to get back on track than to have a goal in the very near future to shoot for. This has seemed to help me in the past and I'm counting on it now. So far it seems to be doing the trick. I am day 3 into tracking my food (again) and am doing AWESOME! I'm feeling great. I'm feeling motivated and confident that I can do this. It's done now. I'm signed up so I'm doing it.  Time for me to get serious and get my fitness back!