An Ass-Kicking From My Inner Twelve-Year Old

It's funny how, when you spend the first half of your life an athlete, the second half can come skidding quickly to a halt once you try to regain that early experience. Gratefully, I am sitting here now, still in my warm-ups from my earlier "jog", a well-used single-word expression for an activity at which I formerly excelled. That activity now needs a few more words to describe it accurately, and while it's a much more painful experience than before, it's become a much more colorful one as well. Phrases such as "tar-infested tissue", "spasmodic wheezing" and "iron lung" never crept into my head as easily when I was a twelve-year old cross-country athlete with a personal best 6:54 mile, as they do now, at the merciless old age of twenty-three.

When I was a kid, running was just a part of my life. My mother and then-stepfather, both triathletes, fostered a greater sense of well-being in what I have come to rediscover as my greater pain and suffering. We ran in all sorts of events when I was growing up in Florida; my wardobe littered with shirts advertising "The Times Turkey Trot" or "The Jingle Bell Run", I ran as part of my family duty, as an extension of my cross-country training, as something to do. To this day my mother is an avid cyclist and swimmer; a hip replacement a year ago took her off of the running/triathlete circuit for good but she has, at nearly fifty-one years old, a solid-rippling-muscle-below-perfectly-tanned-skin athlete's physique. She smokes cigarettes, but somehow she can do both. I tried the same only to find miserable failure. At twenty-three years old I was facing a relatively sedentary life bookended by gradual, though slightly exponential, weight gain and a pack-a-day habit myself.

Enter Gregory, a recent Boulderite with a tech company, a south-side condo and an affinity for endurance events. We met, I became mesmerized over a couple of dinners and a bottle of Burgundy procured from Paris, and realized that my smoker-friendly, body-abusive lifestyle wasn't going to fit well into my non-smoking triathlete boyfriend's very well. Having enjoyed a series of relationships in which I became what I now ruefully acknowledge as the "almost perfect girlfriend", the "almost" part describing how, in fitting into their lives I kind of lost myself in the process, I didn't want to do that with this one. However, I was beginning to realize, after being on the receiving end of a dozen or so piercing glares shot my way upon lighting up a cigarette, that I didn't necesarily need to "fit it" to kick the habit; actually, it just gave me a better reason than any I'd had previously. Dating a nonsmoker was getting to be a nuisance to my smoking self. Having to constantly brush my teeth, carry mints and gum, suck on Listerine strips and know that I still reeked and my breath was still terrible every time I kissed him was starting to drain me of all of my happy-smoker energy. Not to mention that, in spending an extraordinary percentage of my time with my gorgeous boyfriend, my inner twelve-year old was beginning to reappear, and boy, was she pissed. She took one long, carefully-measured stare at my protruding belly and fat thighs and sighed deeply. Offering up a look of bewilderment, she faced me and spat quickly, "What the hell did you do to me? You look like shit!"

I was about to chastise her language and offer up a plethora of half-baked excuses when I took a good look at her and realized that, language aside, she had a point. My inner twelve-year old had long, lean, tanned legs with rock-solid calves and thighs madfe of solid muscle. She had a tight, almost nonexistent belly and no "I look ridiculous in a sports bra" complex. Looking into my former self, the athlete formerly known as me suddenly realized why Gregory did hours on his trainer in his apartment when he couldn't ride outside because of heavy winds, why my mother, despite her smoking, busted out a sixty-mile ride on the weekends out to Carter Lake or Horsetooth Reservoir or some other beautiful area of Northern Colorado, why every once in awhile even over the last few years I'd get the bug in me and hit a trail for a few-mile hike, or go for a bike ride out ot the nearby reservoir, or something of the like. You don't need to be an Olympic athlete or even in training for your first Ironman to want to feel good. Sometimes you just need to shove the chair away from the computer, kiss your boyfriend on the forehead and get your ass out the door. My inner twelve-year old is now happy with me.