As I write in my bio: I run for many reasons….most of them extremely selfish. Not going to apologize for that. I truly do not want to look awful in my jeans nor lumpy in my bathing suit. Avoiding a heart attack would be stellar as well.

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Avoiding lumps where I can…

Part of my motivation for staying fit is running races. I find it fun and since I am a competitive person, I DO like to see how I stack up against other people my age. I realize that many other people do NOT run for that reason, and that is perfectly fine with me. I’m not out to pick a fight.

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That’s me…running away..towards the finish line. Yes, I passed the dude…

Today I ran a shorter race than I normally would. I did this so I could compete in the same race as my sister, who is not a regular runner. We thought it would be fun to have a family weekend. We were both hoping that her two daughters would run with us. Alas it was not to be. One was much too busy working in Toronto, and the other has an injury that precluded her from running with us, though she did come out and cheer us, along with my husband. Nevertheless, we got our asses up at the crack (no pun intended) of dawn and we ran because we could. We ran to challenge ourselves. I came in second in my age group, which I was absolutely thrilled about.

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Who doesn’t like a freaking gift card?

I’m just about a year out from a successful cancer surgery. Trust….there were times I just wanted to curl up and die. There were times I simply wanted to stay in bed. I did not do that. I made a choice. Fitness is NOT something that was modeled to me. I chose this path. I do the work. While I am not about to be featured in a fitness magazine, I LOVE what I can do and I adore that I can do it at 55. Now excuse me while I do a small victory dance over my second place finish today….I’d love it if more people joined me…it’s pretty easy…you just do it.

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