Accidentally found running. I was the chubby kid, the uncoordinated girl, always picked last for the team. I was not and still am not gifted in sports. I dabbled in volleyball in junior high, cheered for a minute in high school but never found a real talent or love for any sport. For one foolish split second I even tried basketball.
At twenty NINE, I met a runner, Stacie. Many conversations later I decided I was going to run a marathon or a 5K. I knew not a thing about running, not even the distance difference between the 5k and a marathon. I can't even remember the day I started. I just did one day. My earliest runs were at the gym on a treadmill and a track behind my now destroyed place of employment St Johns Regional Medical Center.
That track is no longer there. It is now a parking lot for the new "comeback hospital" Mercy St Johns. Like that track my running world met near destruction this past May 22. An EF5 tornado pummeled my town, my hospital, my life.
So like my parents, my town, my hospital, I will journey to find running again. I've run once on the roads of destruction that were once my neighborhoods. The places, streets, houses, signs, schools, etc that had become safe familiar friends. I cried.
I need to find running again because I can and because I am blessed to be healthy enough to run. I need to run for those who can't, run for all the slow, chubby and last to be picked girls out there. I need to run to find healing as my town heals. Here I go ...
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