Running

Fat Girls Finish: Training for the Missoula Marathon, Part I

By Jule Banville, 5-27-11

	You ruined me and I love you for it. (Actual photo from my honeymoon in Ireland, taken out a rental car window, no zoom on this whatsoever.)

This story really starts with how I got fat(ter), beginning with the gestation of my first child. I call him Butters. He started growing inside me in 2007, when I was on my honeymoon in Ireland.

I mean, I had gone to the gym, even sort-of regularly. I sucked it all, mostly, into the dress. But when it was all over, it was time to stop caring, especially when those Irish cows ate that Irish grass and produced such delicious Irish butter. I mean that stuff is nothing like the hard, tasteless sticks that pass for baking lard over here.

Butters, as you might gather, stuck around long after the honeymoon was over. He added a few friends, namely Beers and Ice Creams.

My routine to deal with these children was to oh, well, you know, hike on the weekends. Walk around town when I could. Occasionally, I’d decide I needed to run. I’d sign up for a 5K, huff through it, quit.

In 2009, I started gestating another child, this one hooked to me by an umbilical cord, rather than by endless pieces of toast. During those times when I missed the departure of Beers from my life, Milkshakes joined Ice Creams. The new child came out, the one I call Kate (she’s an actual person, it turns out, not food).

But Milkshakes, like Butters and Ice Cream, stuck around after the birth and brought along a few more friends.

Something had to be done about these characters hanging around my person all the time, which is when I met some ladies who cajoled me to do something I could never have imagined: training for a half-marathon in Missoula, Montana.

NEXT: Will I make it? Or will I give it up for another go-round at the Big Dipper? Mmmm. Dipper.

Jule Banville is a contributing editor at NewWest.Net and not terribly athletic.

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