Do You Consider Yourself An Athletic Person?

Sometimes I need a reminder of how far I've come. Here's a picture from July 2006, 7 months before I started Weight Watchers. Incredible, huh? I need to more often appreciate what I've achieved so far. More on this in a bit.

So even though I beat the chocolate bowl the foody feelings haven't gone away. On Tuesday night I was munchie all evening. I don't think I went way overboard (it's hard to do in my clean food home anyway) but I pretty much gave up on tracking this week. I'm starting fresh today, the first day of my Weight Watchers week. At WI tonight we'll see how all this non-tracking and foodiness effect my weight.

Yesterday after work I went home and changed and rode my bike 2.5 miles to the gym. I started Week 7 on the c25k running program; week 7 is one 25-minute run. All three days are the same. I missed Monday so after doing it last night and again tomorrow it will only be twice, not three times. Since I'm repeating Week 7 next week I'm not too worried about it though. Last week I checked out the calendar and in order to finish c25k by the week before my triathlon I had to move on to Week 7 without repeating Week 6. That's fine because at this point it's just doing longer and longer runs. There are no walk breaks from Week 7 on. I'm happy to say the 25-minute run was not significantly challenging.

After the elliptical and c25k I moved on to weights. It was lower body so I did my lunges, squats, side-lunges, etc, followed by Core work. When I was done I hopped on my bike and rode 2.5 miles to the pool. You might remember there's a hill between the gym and the pool and I looked at that hill and told it I would conquer it today and many more days ahead. I got to the pool and swam for a little over an hour. When I was done I rode the 2.5 miles home. I jogged, rode my bike and swam all in the same day for the first time!

I was really tired after work so I had an espresso and an AccelGel about an hour before the gym. I had another AccelGel afterward because I wanted my body to have all the help it could to recover. I arrived at the gym at 4:15pm and left the pool at 7:30pm so that's over 3 hours of exercise!

Alright, here's the real news. Jean, the swim coach, gave me some new drills yesterday. I loved them, a lot of fun. Of course I felt somewhat disorganized in the pool and I'm always constantly thinking about all the things I'm supposed to do, "Elbows up, thighs relaxed, power from the hips...". When I was done I got out of the pool and Jean asks me the following question:

-Do you consider yourself an athletic person?
::laughing::
-I guess that's a no. You've never played any sports?
Just tennis in high school.
-Well, you are picking this up really quickly. I give you new drills and you get them down right away. And you have an athletic frame, your broad shoulders are perfect for swimming.
Really?
-Maybe swimming will turn out to be your sport.
Thanks.

For any of you that have spent most of your life being fat and out of shape you know what something like this feels like. I was dumbstruck. My broad shoulders are a good thing? I have an athletic frame? I had a sudden burst of insight. I felt in my bones why it's so important to encourage children. Of how they are highly impressionable little creatures who just need someone to tell them they can. I realized I didn't get that and suddenly I had a sense of what I missed out on. It's not that Jean is the first person in my life to compliment me but I think it's the fact that what she said was just so completely opposite of my self-image. And she's not a loved one or a good friend, just a swim coach. That and I was probably drained so more emotional. So, if you have children or spend time with them, do what you can to build them up, create a reservoir of confidence because they'll need to draw on that the rest of their lives.

This reminds me of a post Flo wrote a while back. I've actually thought about what she wrote a number of times. It was all about how she realized she didn't previously believe in her own abilities and now she does and how much easier that's made things. I don't have what she has, I still don't really believe. I find it almost impossible to believe I'll get to my goal weight, that I'll maintain it, that I'll be able to jog during the run in my triathlon, that I don't look "fat". I need to believe. If I don't, who will? I can't imagine how much this holds me back. So I'm working on it. And thank you to every single one of you, friend or stranger, who believe in me.