My First-Ever Tattoo: From Promise to Reality

Back in March, I had promised that if I made my Team in Training fundraising goal for the NJ Long Branch Half Marathon, I would get my first-ever tattoo - a smaller version of this taco tattoo - by the end of the year. Well, I was about a month behind schedule, but on Sunday, January 27, 2013, I made good on that promise. It's still healing, but this is what it looks like 2 1/2 weeks later. It doesn't hurt, it just eventually needs to peel on its own, kind of like a sunburn.

(Click the picture to enlarge.)

The idea for a taco tattoo as a symbol for me to remember why I do my marathons and half marathons and who I do them for came about largely in memory of my friend Patty who lost her battle with cancer almost two years ago, and her love of Taco Tuesdays. Those of you who are friends with me on facebook know that I was already posting a weekly "Happy Taco Tuesday" status message in memory of Patty. The tattoo idea came about a bit later, and I just knew that a taco tattoo above my left ankle was the way to go. Now, whenever I look at it, I remember my friends who have kicked cancer to the curb, those currently fighting their battles, and those who have lost theirs. I have a feeling that the resultant innuendos are their gift back to me.

As some of you know, this was not a decision I made lightly. I had been thinking of doing this for a while, and wanted to make sure it was done right. My worst fear was that my tattoo would come out looking nothing like what I had in mind, or worse yet, that it would come out looking awful. So, when my finances finally allowed, I took my time, read reviews of several tattoo shops here in Queens, NYC, and finally decided on True Blue Tattoo in Middle Village, Queens. Why did I go to a tattoo shop halfway across Queens, when there were several closer shops in my immediate area? I don't know. Something about it just felt right, and I've learned to trust that feeling. I'm very glad I did. My tattoo artist was Louis Andrew, and I could not possibly have asked for a better fit both in terms of what I wanted to have done, and personality. I could tell right away that Louis truly loves what he does, and his portfolio is really amazing. I can't say enough great things about both the shop and Louis. I don't think I could have possibly had a better first-time tattoo experience.

For those wondering about the pain. I don't know if it was the spot on my ankle that I chose for the tattoo, or Louis, but it wasn't bad. I watched the whole thing as he was doing it, and the hardest part was staying still. There were a few spots where I really felt it, but even that wasn't overly painful. I didn't scream, cry or curse - not even once.

Now is the Time on Sprockets When We Whine

I think we may all hit this point at some time during our fundraising and training efforts. I woke up yesterday having some serious doubts about this whole NJ Half Marathon thing. My fundraising's not going as well as planned, I'm worried about the finishing time limit for the race, and lately, I'm just not that into pushing it for some reason.

My final fundraising amount of $2,150.00 isn't due until mid-April. BUT... I need to commit to raising the full amount by mid-February. Once I re-commit, what a lot of people don't realize is that it's then on my head to either raise $2,150.00 in donations, or have any shortfall come out of my pocket. I think that's the part that I'm really not sure about at this point. I really can't take on another financial obligation, even a potential one.

According to the official info, there's also a strict 3:15 (that's 3 hours and 15 minutes for you non-runners) time limit on the half, otherwise you do not qualify as a finisher and do not get a medal. My current finishing time on a half is 3:31.

If I really run/walk the whole thing, the 3:15 shouldn't be a problem, but I'm just in a funky "I'm sick of asking people for money and getting up and out of the house before 7:30 on a Saturday morning in the cold" kind of a place.

Feelin' Groovy

I did manage to get off the pity pot long enough to get to Astoria Park for our 8 mile Queensboro Bridge Run/Walk/Whatever, which was followed by a group brunch at Sparrow Tavern. Walking across the bridge and back with my mentor, Susan, and team mate Nikki helped put things into a better perpective, but the jury's still out for me on this one.

Yesterday was definitely one of those "dark days of training". I'm seriously hoping it will pass. Now, if this had been Disney, it might've been a whole 'nother story.

You Gotta Know When to Hold, and Sometimes...

You gotta know when to fold 'em. As in after mile 4 of this morning's Ted Corbitt 15K race of death. I went into this with high hopes, after surviving the brutal weather conditions of last year's race. I really wanted to show Ted who was boss this year. Alas, finishing was not meant to be.

Last year, I was healthy on race day. Not so this week. I've been dealing with a major respiratory cold/bug/whatever since Tuesday. Yesterday morning in Central Park, I did a 4.04 mile run-walk in 1.01 hours, and didn't feel particularly bad afterwards. My warning sign should have been when I started losing my voice on the phone last night. It should also have been when I woke up wheezing and coughing a few times during the night. My body was trying to tell me something, but did I listen??? NOOOOOOOO!!! I was very intent on kicking Ted's ass. My plan was, at least according to whatever I wrote on my facebook page at somewhere around 5:30 this morning, to show up, attempt the first 4-mile loop, and then quit if I felt like death. At least I can say I stuck to my plan!

While it was not as brutally cold as last year's race, it's still December in New York City, and it was still cold. Maybe not, as my father would've said, "snot-freezing weather", but still cold enough at somewhere around 32 degrees (that's Fahrenheit, not Celsius, for those who weren't sure). Somewhere between the corral and the starting line, I lost my left glove. Fortunately, I had stashed my pair of dollar store gloves in my pocket, so I didn't have to do the race looking like a Michael Jackson impersonator. Then, somewhere before mile one, my left groin muscle started to hurt. Not horribly, but eventually enough to make the "run" part of "run-walk" pretty much out of the question. Special thanks go to my friend Liz and Coach Dari for hanging with me up until around the 4 mile mark. I was not a particularly happy camper, and was probably WAY not fun to walk with. (Note to Liz: Next race, if I'm not feeling 100%, RUN FAR AWAY and SAVE YOURSELF!!! Seriously, I won't be upset, nor do I want to inflict my pain on others - it may be in everyone's best interest to just leave me alone with my misery:-)

So, I get to around the 4 mile mark and just know it's time for "Plan B" to go into effect. I wasn't feeling well, and the thought of having to survive another 5 miles was just too much. So, I decided to stop. Not quit. Stop. There's a difference, and what happened next made that distinction very clear. There comes a time when, as Coach Dari put it, you have to listen to your body. Your body gives you signs and you really should listen to them. The way I see it now is that it's kind of like those cheesy horror movies I watch all the time. You know, when the young couple with the two kids gets a great deal on a house that is generally way, way, way out of their price range. That would be sign number one. Then they ask the realtor why the house is so cheap, and they get some lame-ass story that only people in a horror movie would believe. That's sign number two. Sign number three is when they go into town to do some food shopping, and get all sorts of funny looks when they tell people that they've just bought the old "Bates" place up the road. They still don't realize that something is wrong with that house. Usually, they don't realize it until the walls start dripping blood and the house starts yelling at them to "GET OUT!!!" That's a really BIG sign that they really SHOULD listen to, but DO they??? NOOOOO!!! They decide to fight whatever's possessing the house, which usually involves it having been built over a sealed portal to hell that's been re-opened or some old sacred burial ground. That's when it gets really messy.

So, what happened next that made me realize the difference between quitting and stopping? When I started barking. Yes, you read that correctly. I had just passed our head coach Michael and told him I was done and leaving. I got about 10-15 feet away, and I started making these very strange barking noises when trying to breathe in. It sounded like a barking seal. Now, I'm totally used to wheezing, and an occasional barking cough at some point during my semi-annual cold. But this was happening when I was inhaling, not exhaling, and I was having trouble breathing air in. Pardon my French, but that scared the fucking crap out of me! I have never, ever, even with my mild asthma, had problems getting air into my lungs, much less made strange barking sounds while trying to do so. Definitely my body telling me to "GET OUT!!!" So, I stopped, and, after a few more barking incidents, they eventually stopped, too. This was not about quitting or giving up, as much as it felt that way at the time. This was about stopping because I could not breathe. I even started crying at one point while I was changing into my warm clothes, which definitely didn't help matters any. Bad enough to be barking like a seal, but having a snotted-up nose from crying was just the icing on the cake!

(Edited to clarify, because someone expressed concern about this being something potentially more serious: The barking was not coming from my lungs, but from my throat, which, if this makes sense, felt like it was closing up. Don't know if it was due to over-exerting myself or some sort of emotional/stress-related thing, but it stopped once I stopped the race, and hasn't happened again since.)

Interestingly enough, once I got out of the race and out of the park and onto Fifth Avenue, I started to feel more human. I decided to try to walk down Fifth Avenue from East 102nd Street to 86th and Lexington to catch the subway. I started to relax, and made it down to the Metropolitan Museum, and a coffee vendor, at East 82nd Street. With hot coffee in hand, I decided to keep walking down Fifth Avenue for as long as I continued to enjoy the walk. I made it down to East 57th Street and still felt good. I stopped at Rockefeller Center both to see the tree and to use the restroom, and kept going. I made it all the way down to the #7 subway station at East 42nd Street, where I got on my train back to Queens.

A Lovely Stroll Along the West Side Highway

If you would like to make a donation to support my Leukemia & Lymphoma Society's Team in Training fund raising efforts, please go to http://pages.teamintraining.org/nyc/wdw11/cmartzinek

Today, our training session consisted of a lovely stroll along the West Side Highway. For those of you who do not live in the New York City area, the West Side Highway runs along the Hudson River, and there's a very nice, scenic and most importantly, FLAT running and biking path that extends pretty much along the entire west side of Manhattan. It's a really great place to get out and go for a walk, run or run-walk. It is also right on the water, making it really cold out there on days like today, when the high temperature is 40 degrees or below. (NOT to be confused with 40 below - I think I'd kind of have to draw the line and say "NO WAY, José!" if that was the case!)

I went through this particular form of torture last winter season during training, so I had a pretty good idea of what I had to look forward to today. I started trying to get myself psyched into it around 7:00 PM last night. I made myself get my clothes, sports drinks, a change of warm clothes for afterwards, etc. ready, so that all I would need to do when the alarm went off at 5:30 AM would be to get dressed, wash my face, brush my teeth, throw some make up on my face (yes, I try to spare my team mates from seeing me without makeup), have some coffee and spend some quality time on facebook before I have to leave the house to catch the 7:20 AM bus to the Main Street Flushing subway station (more on that later). So, everything was all ready to rock-'n'-roll before "Judge Judy" time.

Fast-forward to when my alarm went off this morning. Now, any other morning, when I don't have to wake up at the butt-crack of dawn, I am up, semi-alert and half-caffeinated usually before 6:00 AM. For some reason, whenever I have to be up at that hour, I need to set both alarms on my dual-alarm clock, and hit the snooze button several times before I actually get out of bed. This morning was no exception. The only difference this morning was that I allowed myself to chant "I hate this part, I HATE this part!" about twenty times OUT LOUD before getting out of bed. I scared the crap out of my cats, Tigger and Gateway! They just looked at me and ran out of the bedroom at about 90 mph. For some reason, it worked. I got out of bed, put the coffee on, fed Tigger and Gateway (not necessarily in that order), and turned on my computer and my cell phone. Sometime after I shut my phone off for the night, I had received a message from one of my coaches in response to something else and part of it said:

"...for what it's worth, you are earning a hell of a lot of respect this season. Well deserved, too, I might add. Keep up the good work."

I quote that text message not to pat myself on the back, but to illustrate the difference between how I see my training efforts vs. how others see them. That, and to show how, whenever I need an extra shot in the arm to keep going, one magically seems to appear at just the right time. How could I possibly not show up for this morning's tort... I mean trainining session after that???

The NYC Mass-Transit Gods were with me again this morning. Not that he reads this or anything, but I have to give a huge shout-out to the driver of the 7:20 AM Q65 bus on Saturday mornings. The man is always on time. He's like clockwork (and yes, I've thanked him for it!) Ditto for the MTA #7 train crews for keeping those running amazingly well on Saturday mornings. I can honestly say that mass-transit issues are not a regular part of my Saturday mornings. Everything runs like clockwork on Saturdays.

So, I made it to Central Park on time, and with a bit of trepidation, took off the fleece vest I had been wearing under my jacket and left it with the rest of my warm clothes at bag watch. Did I mention it was COLD outside??? At any rate, it all worked out amazingly well. I had basically decided that my goal this morning was to show up, and that anything else was a bonus. I had planned on walking this morning instead of run-walking, so I had two walking buddies, one of which was my fellow blog-buddy, Joanne. Having walking buddies really helped all of us keep our minds off of how cold it was and how much further we had to go. Surprisingly, it wasn't as cold as I thought it would be, and didn't get that cold until we were on the way back and got near Chelsea Piers. I also surprised myself by run-walking a good portion of it, although my "run" was more like a slow jog today. I started run-walking it when I started feeling my hamstrings getting a bit tight, and it really helped. I'm still not sure what my goal is going to be in terms of run-walking for the Walt Disney World Marathon. Am I going to try to run-walk the entire thing, or just use it as a tool when I need it to keep me going? I may not know until that morning, and that's okay. I'll pack my Gymboss either way.

The end result was that we did it. Two and a half hours and 8.75 miles later, we were DONE!!! Now, I just have to decide if I want to attempt a 10K race tomorrow morning in Central Park, or be a total slug. Stay tuned...

I Think I May Be the Oldest Person on Our Team

For real. Seriously. Unless there's someone else on the Team in Training NYC Chapter Winter Season team who's over 47, I may very well be the oldest person on our team. I could possibly be old enough to be the mother of pretty much most members of our team. Actually, far from the age thing bothering me, I think it's pretty cool. I guess it kind of makes me a mascot of sorts.

The thing that I have to remember is that, especially after being 100+ lbs heavier for almost 20 years of my life, I am not 27 years old anymore. My body is not in the same shape as it was, and it will probably never be in the same shape as my much younger team mates. I sort of forget that occasionally, and have a habit of beating myself up over it. For example, as part of my Team in Training Fast Track mentor duties, I took a spin class back in the spring. I had to bail after about 40 minutes. I beat myself up over not finishing for a while. Then I realized something. Let's face it - taking your first spin class at the ripe old age of 46, after weighing over 300 lbs for a good part of your adult life is a lot different than taking your first spin class at 27, when you're in reasonably good shape. The fact that I survived 40 minutes of it is quite an achievement in itself! Three years ago, when I weighed in at somewhere around 275 lbs I don't think I would've lasted 5 minutes, let alone 40!

My recent training sessions have also proven that I'm in better shape this year than I was last year. I've had this feeling for the past few weeks that I'm nowhere near where I should be at this point in my training. Two weekends or so ago, I took Harlem Hill in Central Park uphill at under 14:45/mile, mostly around 14:30/mile. Last year when I did Harlem Hill for the first time, I was somewhere around 16:30/mile. I'm also not wimping out on hill repeats. This past week, thanks to some great motivation from a couple of mentees, I pushed it for an extra repeat up the hill, and it felt great!

I just have to watch that I don't start getting too cocky about my ability to finish the marathon because I've done it already. I think that's going to be the biggest mental challenge. Last year it was the fear and panic that I wouldn't finish. But I've been there, done that and know that I can do it now - even at the ripe old age of 47!

26.2 Miles Later...

I did it! I crossed the finish line of my first (and possibly last) full marathon. (Yeah, I know - I say that now.)

I think one of the most amazing things (besides actually being able to see and cross the finish line) was that I did it all with only one pit stop during the race at Mile 9, without another one until I got back to my hotel room after the marathon. We're talking almost 6 hours without a pee break. Considering the amount of water and Power Ade that I drank at each station, and the fact that it was freezing-ass COLD out there, that's nothing short of miraculous!

All in all, I held up pretty well physically. Some minor annoyances like a small blister at the bottom of my little toe that started at around Mile 23, and my left knee started to bother me a little bit after Mile 10, probably due to the pitch in the road. Mentally was another story altogether. There were some long stretches of highway walking - particularly between the starting line at EpCot and the Magic Kingdom. On the plus side, they were flat. On the minus side, they were B-O-R-I-N-G! They were also just a bit windy in spots. Just a bit. I think my worst stretch mentally and physically was between miles 18-24, especially between miles 20-21! (Those of you who were there know what I mean:-) My best miles pace-wise were miles 1-10.

My best miles mentally were miles 24-26.2, when one of my coaches met me and walked through EpCot's World Showcase with me as far as mile 26. It was like strolling through my "home away from home" at Disney. The best part (aside from crossing the Finish Line) was having an unplanned cheering section made up of my friends, the fabulous and wonderful World Showcase Players, who were starting a show right as I passed the United Kingdom pavillion. That was AWESOME!!! Talk about perfect timing!

More to follow a bit later (because there's SO MUCH more great stuff to tell), but I wanted to write at least this much down before I forgot it all. It was a great experience!

Less Than 10 Days to Go!

I can't believe it's almost here! After all this training and fund raising, the day of reckoning is quickly approaching.

I've already started packing for the trip, although I'll probably re-pack and re-organize my stuff several times between now and when I actually leave for the airport. My race day clothes are picked out and ready to put in my carry-on, along with a backup outfit just in case. My Disney park pass "will call" confirmation is printed out in triplicate, and with copies stored in my wallet, my carry-on and my suitcase, again "just in case". I've printed out two copies of my marathon waiver, packed my iPod charger and Blackberry charger, and am charging up my camera batteries as I type this. My plan is to take both my iPod Nano and iPod Shuffle with my Nike+ Sportband as my "Plan B".

I know I've over-packed some clothes, and I'll be narrowing them down within the next few days, so that I have two outfits for each day of my trip - one warm weather outfit, and one for chillier weather. I have a set of "dispose-a-clothes" to wear in the chillier early-morning temps on race day while I wait for the race to start. I have a checklist a half a mile long to make sure I don't forget anything. I think I'll relax once I'm actually in the airport with the rest of my team!

I'm Not a WIMP!!! I'm a ...

SERIOUS BAD-ASS!!!
(and quite modest about it, too, as you can see:-)

Things I learned today:

• AccuWeather is definitely less-than-Accu-Weather! It was nowhere a "real feel" of 9 degrees this morning! Fortunately, it actually felt warmer than it did last night!
• If you do the absolutely most hated, "I can't deal with this" part of your training workout first, everything else is downhill - in some cases quite literally!
• One reverse upper loop up the West Side of Central Park in the freezing cold makes you a bad-ass. Two reverse upper loops up the West Side of Central Park in the freezing cold makes you a SERIOUS BAD-ASS! The added bonus is that nothing else in the park is anywhere near as torturous and the rest of the workout is a piece of cake!
• Even after walking over 14 miles, I am still faster than half the tourists on Fifth Avenue! Holy crap, those people walk SLOW! Amazingly, I did not mow anyone down, although I came close on more than one occasion.

My walk coach, Barb, was very helpful during my "meltdown moment" yesterday. The "staying in the park instead of going up Riverside to the Little Red Lighthouse" idea was a good one and it really worked out well for me. It went so well, that instead of my usual walk to the subway station at Fifth Avenue and West 59th, I walked all the way down to Fifth Avenue and West 42nd Street! Total miles on my pedometer at the end of it all was...

17.25 miles!!!

Another interesting by-product of all this is that "The Great Broccoli Mystery", which I originally wrote about here has been SOLVED!!! It grows on the trees in the area! No joke! If you look at the picture below, you can see round objects on the tree branches in the lower left, and upper middle sections. (They're a bit larger up close - about the size of a tennis ball.)

Those aren't nuts or apples or cherries. They are broccoli-like things that are look like the thing in the center of this picture:


Had we not been doing a reverse loop this morning, we might never have solved the mystery!

I'm Being a Wimp, Not a Bad-ass

I think I've probably hit the worst part of my training, at least mentally.

I am freaking out, in tears and panicking about doing a 16-17 mile walk tomorrow in the freezing cold. I don't think it's about the weather or the distance, though. I think it's more of a mental thing. I've e-mailed one of my coaches for suggestions. In the meanwhile, I'll write about it here so that at least I can get it out of my head and onto "paper".

I am scared to death about getting through tomorrow's long walk. We're supposed to walk up Riverside to the Little Red Lighthouse and back, and then some. It's supposed to be 26 degrees out at 8:00 AM, with a "real feel" of 9 degrees! After my 9/11 volunteering, and my more recent trip down the West Side Highway and back last week, I know it feels about 10 degrees colder along the water and it's usually really windy. But, at least walking down the West Side Highway is familiar. I know where things like clean restrooms are. I have no familiarity with walking up Riverside. I also know that, as a walker, chances are I'll be walking at least part of the way back alone. So, the thought of being in unfamiliar territory, in the freezing cold all by myself is kind of scary. I don't think the thought of doing it would bother me as much if the weather was warmer. The combination of the two, though, is more than a bit intimidating and overwhelming. We have the option of doing our miles in the park, which may be what I'll end up doing if no one else is going to be walking up Riverside and back with me.

The other thing that's overwhelming me a bit is the thought of then having to commute back home in the cold. I have a change of clothes packed, so I have something warm and dry to change into once I'm done, but I think I'm having flashbacks from last weekend, when I was wet and chilled to the bone and waiting for a bus in the rain. I didn't get really warm and dry for over 2 hours after the actual walk was over. I really don't want to go through that again. I think being chilled and cold on the trip home is worrying me more than being cold during the actual 16 mile walk, if that makes any sense.

Like I said, I'm being a wimp, not a bad-ass right now:-) I'll survive, I'm sure. Nothing I could possibly face in the Walt Disney World Marathon next month could ever be this bad weather-wise!

What's Broccoli Got to Do With It?

Yesterday's training walk was a 12-miler... in the rain! Last week, I had a very rough time finishing 10 miles, so I wasn't too sure that I'd make it the full 12 miles. But, I did, and with energy to spare, surprisingly! (I promise I'll get to the the broccoli part eventually.) So, what was different this week from last week? What worked this time around? This is what I did differently:

• Wore my "Emergency Rain Poncho" to keep dry. This had little or no effect on my actual walk, other than to make me a real fashion statement. Also, if you ever need to rely on an "Emergency Rain Poncho" in an actual weather emergency, by the time you got the thing opened and on, the storm would've passed six times over. Seriously, they're like trying to un-stick Saran Wrap. Do yourself a favor, and use a large trash bag or recycling bag instead. I've since bid on, and won, a GoreTex jacket on eBay.
  
• Ate my whole wheat bagel with peanut butter about a half hour before walking. This worked! Last week, I ate my whole wheat Arnold Sandwich Thin with peanut butter before I left the house, which I guess was way too early. On previous walks, I'd get a bagel at the cart on my way out of the subway, and that has worked as well. So, now I know to have my bagel and coffee about a half hour before I walk.
• Brought two different types of sports drink, one high in carbs and one high in potassium and with bit more sodium - both from PowerBar. This worked! I alternated between the two, and it seems to have worked out fine.
• Brought a second whole wheat bagel with peanut butter and ate half after about 5 miles, and half after about 8 miles. This worked! I wasn't lightheaded after my walk at all, nor was my stomach growling. I think I need to have some sort of solid food in my belly after a while.
• Walked at a slower pace. This worked, but I'm not sure I'm all that happy about it. I started off slower (still under a 16 minute mile) and didn't really push myself too hard to go faster. However, by the time we finished 12 miles, I still felt good enough to walk about another half mile to the subway station, and then walked another half mile from the bus to my mother's house afterwards. I did not feel like I wanted to die or kill my coaches. This is a good thing!
• I walked with someone else. This really worked well for me mentally. It was nice to focus on a conversation, rather than how far I still had to walk. Plus, I got to learn a bit more about one of my team mates.

Now, I promised I'd get to where the broccoli fits in eventually. Maybe one of you can solve this mystery. For the past three Saturdays, right before we get to Harlem Hill in Central Park, there has been broccoli on the jogging path. There are no horses or anything in sight, just heads of broccoli, sometimes whole and sometimes squished all over the path. I haven't been able to find a reason for this. I've asked my coaches, and I've Googled "Central Park broccoli" to no avail. Does anyone know why there is always broccoli on the jogging path just past East 105th Street in Central Park? Enquiring mind wants to know!

Why Training for a Marathon is a REALLY BIG Deal for Me

Aside from the obvious reason of raising funds for much-needed cancer research and patient support programs sponsored by The Leukemia & Lymphoma Society's Team in Training, that is.

Training for a marathon represents a HUGE symbol of my progress physically. On 9/11, I weighed just over 300 lbs. In October, 2006 I weighed roughly 289 lbs, and in April/May 2007, I was hospitalized for the first time in my life with cellulitis. After never spending a night in a hospital for over forty years, I was hospitalized twice in one month! I got cellulitis first in one leg, and then a few weeks later in the other. Real fun - NOT!

Long story short, I apparently got it due to severe cracks in both my heels, thanks to working in a job where I was on my feet for about five hours straight each day. I worked for an all-natural vitamin & nutritional supplement company (funny, huh?:-) and part of my job involved packing all of the previous day's orders and getting them ready for shipping. Another fun side effect of the job was severely cracked fingers and palms of both my hands. All of this was later diagnosed as eczema, but I felt like I had the plague. Some of you reading this will remember those fun days.

At any rate, thanks to a wonderful dermatologist, an equally wonderful podiatrist and getting fired via FedEx (another first) from the job at the nutritional supplement company due to my "recent and planned extended absences" (umm... I was sick and in the hospital - I was not out having the time of my life in Disney World), my hands and feet slowly began to heal. I have been completely "crack-free" for just over a year now.

Fast-forward to November 2007, when I walked into my first Weight Watchers meeting. I weighed in at 271 lbs. While I had done charity walks before, the possibility of me actually walking in a marathon never entered my mind. The end of this month will mark my 2-year anniversary with Weight Watchers, and I currently weigh in at 186 lbs - 85 lbs less than when I started, and about 120 lbs down from my heaviest weight.

Training for this marathon represents all of the progress I've made over the past 2 years. The fact that I can walk a 10K in under 2 hours and not need an oxygen tank or CPR afterwards feels pretty good. The fact that my feet can handle all this walking without having to deal with painful cracking and splitting is amazing. The fact that I can now walk a mile in under 15 minutes is pretty miraculous! (Hallelujah! She can WALK!:-)

So for me, in addition to the importance of raising much-needed funds, this marathon also represents a celebration of my new life, because I never would've been able to do I of this 2 years ago.