Brad called me, probably about a month ago and asked me to be the speaker at the Kiwanis Club Luncheon today. Why in heaven’s name he asked me, I’ll never understand. The only thing I can figure is he got stuck with providing the speaker for today and couldn’t think of anybody else? I agreed to speak and today was the day. This is a report of today’s “speech.”
First, backtrack how I know Brad:
He works at our County Utility Coop. One day I was doing, I think it was a 28 mile training run and part of my route took me past his office, the County Coop Headquarters. It had been a particularly difficult run in regards to traffic. There is a lot of fleet truck traffic along this road and to be frank, the drivers were being rude.
I noticed after a while that if I saw a white pickup truck, I didn’t have to worry about diving for the ditch because all those drivers were very polite. They’d slow, move into a further away lane if at all possible and wave as they drove by. After this had happened a half a dozen times, I noticed without fail the drivers worked for the County Coop.
Seeing as I was running past the headquarters, I decided I’d pop in and thank whoever was in charge of the fleet drivers for their polite drivers! I mean, it’s always nice to hear something good about your employees, right?
Brad was the guy I ended up talking to. He’s a super nice guy, too, and we had a nice chat and I thought that was that.
Over the past few years, we’ve had opportunity to speak a few other times and I guess he decided to ask me to be today’s speaker.
He wanted me to talk about my journey from being obese to becoming an ultra runner.
Now, I don’t find my journey all that amazing? Let’s think about it. I let myself get very large. I’m 4’11” and was tipping the scale at 275lbs. That’s pretty rolly polly.
Losing the weight took an eternity. I joined My Fitness Pal and started logging my food. I didn’t diet! MFH (My Favorite Husband) and I went to the bookstore and bought a few cookbooks for Diabetics and I started cooking the recipes from them and simply increased my activity level! Nothing fancy. No weird diets or shakes, pills, powders…I still had my treats~a Nutty Bar and a beer, because I don’t believe in cutting out foods, labeling them “Illegal” or “bad.” No, I simply made smarter food choices and moved more.
Three and a half years later, I had dropped 170lbs and it has stayed off. Maybe it’s because it took so long to lose the weight I haven’t had problems with regaining? Dunno. I do know that I’m a very blessed and fortunate woman!
That’s what I was supposed to share with the group today. I shared about my amazing running buddy, Aiden.
I shared about how wonderful and supportive MFH is. I’m just a very lucky girl!
AND, I was supposed to take up 20 minutes with this!!! It took you what, 5 minutes tops to read this far!?!
Yikes!!!
Somehow, the time passed and I was supposed to open it up for a Q/A. I figured nobody would have any questions and they’d be relieved I’d shut up! Quite frankly, I was afraid of putting people to sleep.
Instead, during different parts of the, about 15 minutes I talked, they’d start applauding! Now, this wasn’t anything that I’d expected! I was soooo embarrassed! I would quickly move on and cross my fingers they’d stop.
Okay, they weren’t QUITE that enthusiastic. LOL!!!
My 15 minutes I allowed myself were over and I was going to park my rumpatootis when people started asking question. I’m guessing the Q/A lasted close to 20 minutes!
It wasn’t anything that I had expected and quite frankly, I was out of my depth.
Of course I got asked about my knees. Wasn’t I having problems with my knees? My knees are just fine, thank you.
And I got the, 100k that’s 62 miles! I don’t even like to drive that far!
Those two things really tickled me.
They seemed genuinely interested, not the, “We’re just being polite” interested, AND I got a free lunch!
Oh! I totally forget to lead with a joke! #MissedOpportunity
#IRun4Aiden
