It's Not
About
the Scale

By Karen Preston

Karen lives, plays, and works
in Portland. A member of TOPS (Take Off Pounds Sensibly), she also founded Pounders, a weight-loss support group focusing on being fit through exercise and healthly lifestyle changes. Her story
was recently featured in Self magazine (September 2003).

I still find each
day too short for
all the thoughts
I want to think,
all the walks I want
to take, all the books
I want to read and
all the friends
I want to see. 

— John Burroughs

Walking Versus Running

There are two kinds of people in this world: those who make New Year resolutions and those who don’t. I probably don’t have to inform regular readers that I fall into the first group. Ever since I was a little kid I always wrote out New Year resolutions and of course “Lose Weight” was etched in stone at the top of my list. Most of the time it seemed like such a huge and overwhelming goal. But in 1997 I finally got serious and began my journey of removing 184 pounds in 3 years and 4 months.

The year before I finished losing weight I was left with a dilemma. I couldn’t write down my usual goal. My goal had been to lose the weight and that had been achieved. But in honor of reaching such a major milestone I felt the need to write down something that is equal in scale. So I decided to walk a marathon in the fall of 2000. Not only would I be doing something that was immense, but I’d also be exercising and helping keep my new body in shape. Double duty! Of course at the time I had absolutely no idea how to accomplish such a lofty goal, but I confidently told all my friends, family members, and complete strangers (to my way of thinking simply friends I haven’t yet met) that I was signing up for the Portland Marathon. That’s called painting yourself into a corner.

It worked like a charm. People constantly asked how training was going. Talk about accountability. I started walking on a treadmill in January and within two months was walking four miles a day, six days a week without any problem. But by April I realized I did have a problem; I was still walking just four miles a day. There didn’t seem to be time to walk any longer in the mornings. In frustration I joined an online support group called the Connectors. (www.connectingconnectors.com). Luckily, one of the local area members told me about Portland Fit, a marathon-training group. It educated me and I began doing my long walks on Saturday mornings with the group. In October of that year I finished the Portland Marathon.

What a sense of power that race gave me. I had been a couch potato since grade school and now I had just completed a freakin’ marathon for goodness sakes! I knew at that point that I could pretty much do anything I set my mind to, so I decided to ramp things up a bit. The next year I resolved I would run the marathon. Never mind that I hadn’t run since forced to in high school gym class. On January 1 I began running and on January 11 I entered a 5k. I ran most of it and practically collapsed at the end. Back I went to Portland Fit for a little education and a lot of camaraderie.

I began meeting a running buddy at 5:30am and forced myself around the track. But frankly running was really hard. I had heard about runner’s high, but I never had a sense of what that might feel like until August of that year, eight months after I started. I finally had a run that seemed easy and effortless. But it quickly went back to being tough. Still I managed to run two marathons that year, the Portland marathon and one in Victoria B.C. The only problem was that running was hurting my left hip. The chiropractor I consulted explained to me about the Q-angle factor. (The Q-angle is the intersection of the tibia and the quadriceps muscle.) It seems that men are faster and have less hip problems since their hips are narrower and as he gently pointed out to me, I have wider hips than most women. I, dear reader already realized this. I’m pear shaped like all the women in my family. Always have been; always will be. But this makes me prone to overpronating and thus to injuries.

So what to do? It took me awhile to get over my ”Quitters never win and winners never quit” mentality and realize that walking isn’t quitting. Running works for some people, but it’s not nearly as much fun in my book. I’m a social person, I simply love talking to people and I can tell you that it’s much easier for me to laugh and chat with my friends while walking. Of course I want to be honest and tell you that there are loads of runners having fun, chatting, and laughing as they put in their mileage. But it was a pure struggle for me and I finally woke up and realized that walking is a pleasure. Life is too short to be struggling; I intend to get as much joy as possible out of my time here on earth. So to all my friends I haven’t yet met, I hope to have a chance to chat and laugh with you too someday. Happy trails!