I’m super excited to join this group of bloggers. I found Claim Your Journey only about six months ago. In early 2011, while in a state of flux unemployment, I moved back home to Baton Rouge for financial reasons. Things have gone much better than I expected. Not perfect, but being the realist (grumpy journalist) about everything, I expected it to be quite horrible.

I am in my second semester as a coach for Girls on the Run of Greater Baton Rouge, a program and group of girls I absolutely adore, met many more runners through CYJ and Black Girls Run! Baton Rouge and New Orleans chapters and have realized how truly blessed I am. Everything about my situation could have been way worse. It is for millions of others right now. Since I started to run in late 2010, it’s become a way of keeping sane and just keeping things in perspective. I’m thinking about the day or about my life or talking to God about one or both of those things.

So! What should you expect in this blog. Don’t expect me to ever mince words. If I like it, I like it. If I don’t, I don’t and I will say so. I over analyze everything. If a post seems to be rambling too much, stick with me or don’t. I eventually make my point. My race reports will run down how I felt at mile three or five or 11 as well as how I feel about how the race was organized.

My Running Journey
I’ve been an athlete most of my life. I started running track in middle school. In high school, I left the track for the field, mainly doing the long, triple and high jump, and the occassional 400 relay. By college, I didn’t want to let go and walked-on to LSU’s track team, where I did the long and the triple jump. For some strange reason, world-renown jump coach Irving “Boo” Schexnayder decided to keep me on.
After college, I was burnt out and called it quits. But I didn’t seem to understand that I couldn’t eat like I was still burning 1,000 calories a day. That didn’t work out too well. I looked up a year later and saw the weight I gained. I was also blessed cursed with a family of wonderful cooks who taught me to throw down in the kitchen. After another year of eating too much of the wrong things, I decided to do something.
That something consisted of almost four years of half-assed efforts to lose weight and get to some decent level of shape. Like too many people, I wanted the whole weight thing fixed quickly without any real effort. It didn’t help that I had been an athlete more than half of my life and never had any weight issues before this.
Well, I eventually got it together by studying some training plans and learning portions and here I am. I just wrapped by first half marathon three weeks ago, getting ready for my fourth trail race, which happens in two months and a full marathon four months after all of that. I’m running the Chicago Marathon and raising money for the Alzheimer’s Association. Feel free to drop some shillings in the bucket here.
Anyway, thank you for having me. We’re going to have a great time!!