Finished Being Fat: An Accidental Adventure in Losing Weight and Learning How to Finish (18 page)

To psych myself up, I remembered our new family motto, “You can do hard things.” It came from Lily’s occupational therapist. When Lily didn’t want to do one of her exercises for her nervous system, she always said, “Nope, it’s too hard,” and her OT would reply, “Well, guess what, Lily? You are SuperLily, and you can do hard things.” And so it became the family motto since we said it so often to her. Being hard wasn’t a good enough excuse to run away, because I was SuperBetsy, and I could do hard things.

And so I trudged onward and upward. At the halfway point up the hill, there was a spray painted face with a squiggly mouth, almost like a grimace. It made me laugh, but not as hard as the one at the top. Next to the arrow pointing to the left was the biggest smile and crinkly eyes spray-painted on a happy face that I had ever seen. It was accurate too, since the expression was duplicated on every single runner’s face as they crested over the top.

I texted Jarom to let him know I had made it over the top. He texted back that he was glad because that almost killed him. It was pretty much literally downhill from there, in a good way. The hardest part was over, and I was once again confident that I could finish. Without the worry, I began to really enjoy the race and the beautiful scenery. People would pass me and shout, “Keep going!” or “You can do it!” as they ran by. At crosswalks, the traffic officers commented as well, one saying, “Great pace. Keep it up. Four miles to go.”

Around mile twenty-three, I saw a runner stop and sit at the aid station. She loudly exclaimed to her companions, “That’s it! I can’t go another step.” She took off her running shoes and massaged her feet. One of her toenails looked kinda mangled. How sad it was to be within three miles and give up. Come on, you’ve already run twenty-three, what’s a few more? I had to keep my forward momentum going, or else I would share the same fate. Still, I thought about her as I walked the next mile. I imagined she had built up the remaining sliver of the race as an impossible feat, instead of seeing all that she had already done. I really hoped that she changed her mind, put her shoe back on, and kept going. But if she did, she never passed me.

With less than two miles to the finish line, Jarom texted me that he was done, that he had finished the marathon. I was so proud of him. I texted my position and that I’d see him in a few. After I put my phone away, I noticed that I was about to pass a portly man in a Day-Glo yellow running shirt. We had been playing leapfrog for the last few miles or so; he would run ahead and pass me, then slow to a crawl and take a break. Since I was keeping a steady pace, I would pass him, and then seven minutes later or so he would pass me again. Apparently it was my turn again, but this time he looked pretty bad off. He stopped to lean on the fence and appeared beat. I yelled out as I approached him.

“Are you doing okay? Do you need a gel? I’ve got some extra if you need it.”

“No, thanks, I’ve got some too. I’m just tired and my legs are jelly.”

“Walk with me, because I can’t stop. Just keep moving, and you’ll get there eventually.”

He chuckled and probably thought I was nuts, but he got in step with me anyway. Maybe it hurt his pride to have a girl walking beat him; maybe he just needed a little encouragement. Don’t know. We chatted for a minute, and he asked about my funny stiff walk. I told him about my leg and he was shocked that I’d shown up at all. Yep, me too. Before he took off running again, I offered up a little bit of encouragement, just like others had been doing for me.

“You know, it feels like the last two miles are the hardest, but think about the first twenty-four. You got through those, so I know you can get through these too.”

“Thank you. Good luck and God bless.”

What a nice man. I never asked his name, so I couldn’t look up the race results later. But I think he finished, because over those last two miles, I never passed him again.

Toward the end, I could hear the crowd and the announcer calling names as they crossed the finish line. This had definitely not been the marathon of my dreams. I hadn’t been able to run the whole thing. I wasn’t even able to do the timed run/walk thing. My time wasn’t anywhere near the five hours fifteen minutes I had projected before my injury. Jarom was not by my side. There was one thing though that would be the same. I was going to finish. And by golly, I would finish running. I waited to start running until I rounded the corner on the home stretch, and for the last two tenths of a mile, I ran.

I crossed the finish line, sobbing from pain and relief. The medical workers asked me if I was okay since I was limping and crying so hard. Nodding that I was, since words were beyond my ability at that time, I shuffled forward to get my reward: the stained-glass finisher medal. A young woman hung it around my neck and gave me a carnation, and at the same time I saw Jarom. I launched myself at him and sobbed even harder. We had done it. We had done the impossible. We had proved absolutely that we could do hard things. For a few moments we held each other, cried, and let it all out.

It was one of the best moments of my life, right up there with saying “I do” and looking into my girls’ eyes for the first time. By running the marathon I had done what I had set out to do—to prove that no task is too hard or too big to try. Because, if I could run a marathon, then I could do anything.

And I did, so that meant that I could.

I
f a fortune teller would have predicted, on the morning of the thud, that in ten months I was going to finish a marathon, I would have windexed her crystal ball and asked for my money back. But here I was—a marathoner. (I love the sound of that.)

Jarom had finished twenty-one minutes ahead of me, in 5:45:00. I finished in 6:06:00. Not a stellar time, but still faster than the runners that didn’t finish. My entire family was pretty surprised I had made it, and, to be honest, I was a little surprised too. It’s one thing to tell yourself that you’re going to do something, but it’s quite another when you actually do. So where was the ticker tape parade and the marching band? I gave myself one in my head, because I had earned it. My daughters wanted to play with my “pretty new necklace.” Not a chance; they would have to pry this medal out of my cold, dead hands.

We spent the rest of the day celebrating, and food never tasted so good. I ate whatever I wanted since I had just burned off a whopping 3,000 calories. Like I’ve said before, dessert tastes better without the side of guilt. The satisfaction of completing our goal was unlike anything I had ever felt. I went to bed with an extremely sore leg and a sore face from smiling all day long.

The next day I wasn’t smiling much anymore. My parents were excited that the race was over because now they wouldn’t have to watch the girls for two-hour runs anymore or be subjected to endless discussions about running. But I was sad. It’s like looking forward to Christmas, then the holiday letdown on December 26, when it’s over. My adventure was over, and I was once again left without a purpose. I resumed my position in the recliner and began working on making a new smaller bum indentation.

One day back in my old chair convinced me that I needed to find a new adventure. How had I ever stood mindless hours on this thing? A stack of good books helped, one of them being
Eat, Pray, Love.
I found that a little humorous since I had changed my life through the Starve, Whine, Dislike approach, or at least that’s how it started off. But now I was happy with my life, my relationship with food, my relationship with God, and my relationship with exercise. It wasn’t quite love, more like Eat, Pray, Tolerate. But still, I had turned myself into a finisher after being a lifelong quitter.

So why wasn’t I out there, busy conquering the world? Mostly, I was focusing on trying to heal up my leg, the marathon had done a number on that left hamstring and knee. For two and a half solid weeks I hardly moved from the chair except to get more ice and new bandages. I was pulling my hair out from the cabin fever, and that’s the only excuse I have for agreeing to climb a mountain. I needed to get out and do something, anything. So when our friends the Becks asked Jarom and me to go hiking with them on Labor Day, I quickly committed without thinking it through. After all, wouldn’t reaching the pinnacle of a tall mountain finish off my yearlong adventure perfectly?

The day before the hike, I began to get cold feet. My back window had the perfect view of the mountain we were going to climb, Lone Peak. It looked really, really high. I don’t do too well with high. Looking from the base of the mountain to the tippy top and back down again, the visual did not compute. How was something like that even possible? It may as well have been Mount Everest as far as I was concerned. How on earth did someone get up into the clouds without either an airplane or a Sherpa and a donkey to carry you?

Jarom was downright giddy with excitement. I told you before that he was into all this kind of stuff. He had already climbed Lone Peak once and had climbed Mount Rainier in Washington many years ago, so he wasn’t the least bit worried. This was his element, what he loved to do. He would be happy living the rest of his life in woods somewhere. Not so much with me. My family’s idea of roughing it was staying at the Holiday Inn Express instead of the Hilton. Hiking and nature aren’t something you do; they’re something you watch on the Discovery Channel. I didn’t know what to expect and none of my other outdoorsy attempts had ended well before.

“So, Jarom, realistically, how long is this hike?”

“Boy, it’s been years and years, but if I remember right it should take us about six hours.”

“And is it really hard, or is it something that even I can do?”

“Of course you can do it. You just ran a marathon. You can do anything.”

I was so pleased at the answer that I failed to notice that he had skirted around the issue of difficulty. Since he hadn’t expressly warned me, I assumed it was a casual hike, difficult because of the time involved rather than the terrain. Well, I had finished a marathon, so I figured I had plenty of endurance. I trusted Jarom, and if he believed that I could do it and be safe, then I would be fine.

***

Forty-five minutes into our ascent, I resolved to never trust Jarom again as long as I lived. It’s my own darned fault for not getting more information before I agreed to this cockamamie stunt. You know what they say about what happens when you assume—it makes an (bleep) out of U and ME. Apparently that made me the donkey that was trekking up the mountain. The four of us took a break after an hour to munch on some trail mix. I looked up at the peak we were somehow magically supposed to reach. Jay Beck misinterpreted my disbelief for wonder. (The only wonder going on was wondering what on earth I was doing.)

“It’s beautiful, isn’t it?”

“Yes, it’s pretty. But what would make anyone think ‘Hey, look at that mountain over there, I think I should go climb that’?”

“Betsy, can’t you hear it beckoning? Calling to you to stand on the top?”

I listened for just a moment. “Nope, no beckoning. Everything about it screams ‘Stay away or die.’”

Everybody laughed, thinking that I was just making a joke, but I was serious. This was stupid and insane. I got a little panicked. What if my leg acted up again? Would I be stuck up here? Would little Mounties come and get me? I had lost weight, but I’m pretty sure I was still too heavy for Jarom to carry me down. For one minute, I felt an absolute certainty that I was going to die on this dumb mountain.

My hiking companions stood up and started climbing again. I seriously considered doing what I had always done before… quit. Two problems with that, though. For one, I didn’t pack a book, and five hours would be a long time to wait by myself without anything to do except become mountain lion food. The other problem you probably already guessed: I had committed to do it, and I was a finisher and not a quitter. It would not bode well for the longevity of my life changes if I folded at the first post-marathon outing.

I took a moment to myself and said a quick prayer that I might survive this endeavor, then I began hiking with renewed intent. This would be just like the marathon, just like everything else I had done this year—only a lot harder and uphill. Climbing a mountain was the final exam to see if I could put all my new skills to use in my life. Seventy-five pounds sounded like a lot, but I did one pound at a time. And so far I had run nearly 500 miles, but it too started with just one. Looking up at the peak made my heart palpitate and gave me vertigo, so instead of focusing my energy worrying about how to make it to the top, I needed to focus on where to place my feet in front of me. As long as I kept climbing, I would get there eventually.

So I made small talk with my companions to keep my mind occupied and only joked occasionally asking, “Are we there yet?” All that mattered was climbing the little path that I could see in front of my feet. When I finished that one, I focused on the next little bit. We broke for lunch at four hours, and we were probably about two-thirds the way up the mountain.

“So am I just really slow? Because I don’t think it’s going to be possible to make it up the rest of the way and back down in two more hours.”

Martha looked intrigued. “Why would you be able to do that?”

“Because Jarom told me it was about a six-hour hike.”

“Oh no. That would be really fast. You’d have to run the whole way, I think.”

I shot Jarom a dirty look. Somebody was sleeping with the dog tonight.

Jay asked Jarom, “Have you summited this one? Is that how long it took you?’

Jarom squirmed uncomfortably. “Well, it was about six years ago, so my memory is a little fuzzy. Now that I think about it, I never actually made it to the top. A lightning storm forced me to come back down.”

To look at me, you would have thought I was trying to catch flies, my mouth was open so wide. I had been duped, tricked, bamboozled. Surely I could not be held accountable to finish an activity I was led to under false pretenses. Probably not, but what could I do about it now? I was already most of the way up, and to turn around and go home without finishing would have been just as bad as the marathon lady with the mangled toenail.