Wednesday, June 15, 2016

Tough MF

The little drawings I do are deceptive. I like that they accurately reflect my negligible neck; however, I am far from triangular in shape and no one will ever mistake my legs for twigs. I like to characterize my body type as "refrigerator." Made of mochi. Filled with slabs of beef.

This is not self-deprecation. I am proud to come from a long line of refrigerators. They have remarkable physical stamina, are able to lift and haul, endure and persevere. They're sturdy and durable in the very finest sense of the words.

My mochi coating keeps me warm and gives me a delightfully intimidating heft. The marbled Kobe beef just below the surface is dense and powerful, able to propel me long distances. When I break up middle school fights, even the biggest kids are no match for my physical presence.  My stature makes me brave. I'm one tough Mochi Fridge!

Unfortunately, "refrigerator" is not a highly-valued body type. And no one can tell when a refrigerator is pregnant. I just look like a larger appliance. As I grow from standard kitchen fridge to industrial cooling device, it's easy to wish I looked like something else -- an hourglass, a marble glued to a chopstick, Salma Hayak. It's tough motivating a dispirited refrigerator, especially coming off a long break without exercise.

Happily, I have family and friends who have agreed to run a 200-mile relay this summer, and we all need motivation for myriad reasons. To prepare for this race, I did a double run on Saturday. My crowning achievement was running a full mile without stopping. While it was tempting to dwell on what a pathetic feat this was, I instead chose to marvel at the progress I made in one week's time. Seven days prior, I huffed around the track in a panic, stopping to walk every eighth of a mile. This week, I huffed with confidence, reaching the mile point before taking my first walk break. That's pretty impressive progress! (Special thanks to my sister for patiently running at my pace and distracting me from the unpleasantness of the situation.)

For the second run of the day, six of us met at the track in the evening. While we ran we planned for the relay, designed our team shirt (it's going to be amazing), caught up on life, and laughed a lot. My favorite part of the evening was our session of planks which led to the development of a new form of exercise, yo-ha-ha -- yoga interspersed with jokes to make your core work even harder. I'm telling you, my running team is brilliant.

Go team! Thanks for helping this refrigerator keep running.


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