In 2005, approaching 40, I started on my first fitness journey. I lost 50 pounds and quit smoking. I tried running and got all the way up to running 3 miles straight thru, but it was always a horrible slog and I’d quit after three or four months. I mostly kept to the elliptical or bike. But I found joy in my life and met my husband that year (though we did not start dating until later).
In 2009, I left NYC and moved to PA to move in with my husband. Between a horrific commute, demanding job and his three boys, my fitness journey took a back seat.
In 2015, as I was approaching 50, I looked around and realized that I had put on 30 of the 50 pounds lost and was feeling pretty crappy about myself. I started my second fitness journey and lost that extra 30 pounds. I tried running various times during this second journey but again, I’d get up to 3 miles straight thru but it was awful and I’d just give up, sticking with elliptical, bike and hiking.
Then in 2023, I guess you could say I started my third fitness journey. My husband said “you know they do races at Disney”. We started running in August of 2023 to train for the 5k and 10K at the 2024 Springtime Surprise. But it sold out too fast and we had to sign up for the challenge. We told each other, “We’re never going to be able to run 10 miles, but we can see how far we’ll go.” Those first couple of months of running were rough. I think it took me two months just to get to running a mile straight thru. Then I discovered the runDisney group and heard about run/walk intervals. Goodness, what a difference that made. I thought I had to run straight thru to be a real runner and could never break that 3-mile mark.
Thanks to this group, I started run/walk intervals and the mileage started to pile up. To my enormous surprise, my husband and I both finished the 10-mile run. I swear, it was one of the most amazing feelings ever to actually complete the challenge and that race. Then I was hooked on runDisney.
We signed up for the Wine & Dine and it was my first half marathon. But the run/walk intervals got me through it. But it was not easy and took well over 3 hours. In 2024, I finished it with just over 350 running miles.
Then I discovered the training logs and Billy’s training plans. Goodness, even with my run/walk intervals, I had been going all out on every run. I did not realize I was supposed to run slow to run fast. I started slowing down in my runs and boy, what a difference that made!
Then came Marathon Weekend at the beginning of 2025. We originally wanted to just do everything except the marathon but got shut out of almost everything. After much discussion and stalking Telegram, we decided to just sign up for the Dopey because it was the easiest way to get the three races we wanted. We’d laugh and talk about how we were too old and too slow to ever try a marathon. Because, holy heck, it is a lot of work which we agreed we would never try to put ourselves through. But I did want to run through the castle so I told Rick: “we’ll just start the marathon and let ourselves get swept after that.” Well, we knew what happened with that (tripped over a cone at 19 miles and broke my arm).
If you go this far, I warned you that it was a long story!
