I'm Going Slightly Mad

*Originally written on Monday, August 3, 2009 at 3:46pm*

I think I’ve gone mad, or at least that was what I told my friends last year when they signed up for the Ragnar Relay. You see, last year at this time I could not even walk 3 miles much less think about running. I wanted to lose weight. I was trying to lose weight. I worked at a gym, I knew what you need to do to lose weight. I was working out and eating right but it wasn’t working. I was in pain. My feet hurt. I couldn’t breathe. I sneezed and wheezed all the time. And on top of all of that I itched… Seriously… from head to toe my skin itched, constantly. So when a group of coworkers and friends said that they were going to run across the state in a relay race I thought they were all crazy. This type of event was completely unfathomable to me.

But something happened last September. I learned that I had severe food allergies. Wheat & yeast were making it impossible for me to be healthy. The first month I took the food out of my diet I lost 10 pounds.

Slowly I began training for 5Ks. I finished my first race in 39 minutes and ran the entire race. WOW, I ran a race. I was slow, but I finished. I had a sense of accomplishment. My next 5k was finished in 36 minutes! I was getting better… faster one could say. My weight kept falling off. It seemed the longer I stayed away from the ‘itchy foods’ the better I felt and the more weight I lost.

Well, after 6 months I had lost 30 pounds and was quietly thinking about training for a half marathon. I surprised myself. In 6 months I had gone from thinking that all runners were crazy to thinking that I could be a runner! I had a sense of excitement….. But my plans of a half marathon were put on hold. It was at this point that my boss came to me and asked, “Have you heard of this Ragnar Relay race?” I laughed. Had I heard of it? Yes, those ‘crazy’ coworkers ran it last year and couldn’t stop talking about how much fun they had. I was secretly jealous, but always maintained that they were crazy

It was May 2009 and my boss and I decided to get a team together! I went from being overweight and out of shape to being the captain of a Ragnar Team! It’s official. The Running Reckers are signed up to run the Ragnar Relay and I know I’ve gone mad!