Life Changing Events

I was just thinking about how lucky we are sometimes when certain events happen that completely reshape our lives. There are a couple that come to mind for me right now, both involving one of my exercise buddies (and awesome friend). First, some background.

All growing up I was very active. In 6th, 7th and 8th grade, I did after school sports every season and swam competitively during the summer. In high school, I dabbled in soccer and swam competitively for 3 years. I LOVED sports and it has always been a big part of my identity. BUT, even more important to me (as in, my life revolved around it) was music. So music edged out sports and by my senior year in high school I was only concentrating on music, being drum major of our high school marching band, along with the normal stuff like practicing for Regionals and All-State. (It turns out some of that got edged out by Peter, but that is a different story...)

For my senior year, everything worked out okay without sports, but over the next 2 years or so, I gradually gained weight without noticing until one day, I realized I was 20 pounds overweight, and 40 pounds more than when I stopped swimming competitively. Whoops! At random times after that I tried to do some form of exercise but it never became a habit. I ran for a few weeks after Peter left for his mission and lost 10 pounds. Then when he came home we ran for a few weeks until we got married. Then again when I was pregnant with Ally, I went to the pool with another good friend and swam a few times a week for a few months. The swimming actually made a huge difference for that pregnancy. I was so fit and only gained 23 pounds! My body was made to swim, people.

Anyway, a few weeks after Ally was born, my friend asked me if I wanted to go to the gym every morning, I said yes, and we have been exercising together ever since! Three and a half years! When we first started going to the gym, we were so out of shape that it was hard for us to complete 15-20 minutes on any of the cardio machines. I must say that we have come a long way since then!

The other life reshaping thing has to do with the same friend. We were exercising together regularly, going to the gym 5 days a week by this point, and occasionally running/walking a couple very slow miles. She had been mentioning that lots of people in her family were going to be running in a half marathon that summer, and she was thinking of doing it too, even if it just meant walking the whole thing. To me, a half marathon sounded like an eternity of running OR walking. I was in awe of the idea. But sometime in the process of exercising and getting in better shape, a little seedling sprouted in my mind that we could both train for the half marathon together! I mentioned it to her one day, and we must have been in the right frame of mind because we decided to just go for it. And we did it! Our other regular current exercise buddy (and of course great friend) started exercising with us barely into the process and did it with us, too, and she has been exercising with us ever since. (And I must admit that we were both a little jealous at how easily she joined us in our runs.) Now, we are training for a second half marathon and a marathon (which one is still to be determined). For our half marathon, there are SIX of us running together training for the race! We're practically a team.

So there you have it. Those two things have completely reshaped my life in what I hope and plan to be a permanent way.