June 21, 2010
I have never thought of myself as an athlete. As a kid, I hated sports. I would hike only to find a quiet, shady place to lie down and read a book. I played t-ball because my mom wanted me to participate in team sports. I can’t remember why I ran track in junior high, but I suffered through every step of the mile, the half-mile and long jumping. I started to like tennis too late in high school to get on the team so I’ve always just played a couple of times a year with my parents.
When I started working for a health club company, I started going to the gym across the parking lot from our office. I found several benefits in the exercise routine added to my daily life, but it didn’t change anything about my self-perception. I started ‘training’ for my ride in the Tour de Cure, inspiring my friends to get on their bikes and ride with me. It feels really good to know you’ve stumbled on a solution to a friend’s quest for enjoyable exercise, but still I didn’t feel like an Athlete.
Then, I found out about Team WILD through a comment Mari posted on Title Nine’s Facebook post. Something made me sign up for WILD 101 almost immediately. And I started to wonder if perhaps things were starting to shift.
A couple of weeks ago, I zipped into the local Title Nine retail store and was stopped short by the words on their window. Two of them really spoke to me.
“You’re an athlete… if you think strong is beautiful, whatever shape it takes.”
My favorite quote, as shown in my bio here at Team WILD is, “Be strong. Be gentle. Be beautiful, from the inside out.” Some things are ringing true here…
“You’re an athlete… if you stretch your limits.”
For starters, I live my life with Type 1 diabetes. And while it consumes a great deal of my brain power and very occasionally makes me pause, I am always stretching for better self-care and less impact on the rest of my life. On the exercise front, I’m going to train for a longer ride next Tour and longer still the following. I’m stretching my limits, and my teammates’ too. I don’t really know anything about the “how” of this sort of training, but with Team WILD and the support of my T3’s, I’m going to figure it out.
It isn’t like I didn’t consciously start increasing my exercise, but something did sneak up on me. I think, all of a sudden, I might just be an athlete after all.
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