About Heather

This is the true story of a girl who gained weight, lost weight, got physically active (gym/running), slacked off, gained some weight back, and is now on a mission to take up running…AGAIN.

I’m Heather, 28-year-old living in Central New Jersey.  Once upon a time (circa 4 years ago) I looked like this:

18 months later I had transformed into this:

The latter picture is during a business trip to San Francisco in October – the month I hit my goal.  During that same trip, I started running.  Nothing crazy.  I just happened to be in the hotel gym one morning on the elliptical and thought – hey, I wonder if I can run on the treadmill.  Being in a place where no one knew me and therefore unafraid of making a fool of myself, I took a shot.  Before I knew it, I was running!

After running those first steps, I started doing so regularly on the treadmill at the gym.  Between that day in October and the end of December, I built up to 6 miles at a clip on the treadmill.  I was in fantastic shape – the best shape of my life, in fact.  On January 1, 2008, I ran my very first 5K and came in second in my age group.  Granted, there were only about 5 people in my age group…but I had still beaten some of them!  It was completely unexpected from a girl who had never been athletic a day in her life.

Sadly, it was downhill from there.  Smug in my new body and thinking I could do no wrong, it wasn’t long before I started skipping trips to the gym and playing a little more fast and loose with my food choices.  Slowly but surely, some of the weight crept back on.

This is me now:

Still not making great food choices (but also not eating quite as much as I had been) and not really active at all aside from walking the dog at least a mile nearly every day.  But this isn’t a food blog or a weight loss blog.

Despite having gotten off course, I really believe that I have the soul of a runner.  I think back to when I was running miles at a time, and I remember how good I felt.  I want to feel that way again.  In the past couple of years, I’ve tried to start running again at least three times and have flaked out each time.  But I know I can do this – because I’ve done it before.

And this time my motivation is clear – the 2010 Nike Women’s Half Marathon in San Francisco (the place where it all began) on October 17, 2010.  But more so than my desire to run this particular race (which I’ve been thinking about for over a year), is my commitment to Team in Training.  I’ve signed up to raise $3,900 to benefit The Leukemia & Lymphoma Society.

This blog will document my effort to go from running 0 miles to 13.1 over the course of 5.5 months.  Can I do it?  Will I raise all the money I need?  Tune in and find out!

~Heather