I had a weird not me experience the other day earlier this week… I really enjoyed my workout at Santa Rosa Strength & Conditioning and felt like a champion…. the kind where you play Eye of the Tiger on the drive home and then came home and got into weird head space about my body. That’s really unheard of for me, though I know I have goals, I don’t really ever get in a funk about my body size. That same day I had to submit what size shirt I wanted for The Biofreeze San Francisco Marathon Ambassador team and it stung a little to be the only women’s XL on the list. I felt a little bit like hmmm, do I belong here?

But I had to remind myself…. When I had the honor of reading through commentary on the ambo applications for Mermaid Series, I was surprised how many people wrote “I don’t look like a runner”.

I have now been to many races and training runs and though the really super fast runners are built a certain way, there are people of all builds running 5ks to 50ks, from noviced runners to runners who can tackle events with thousands of feet of elevation gain.

I don’t look a certain way but I haven’t really let that stop me. I had to remind myself of the same words I constantly am reminding everyone else of…

If you run, you’re a runner.

I don’t have to preface that with things like “slow”, “fat”, “plus size”, “turtle” because I don’t identify that way. I simply see myself as a runner.

End of story.