I am a runner. I take on half marathons and I’m proud of that fact. In fact, I have another one scheduled in a few weeks and one in February as well. I have been running for 1 year and scheduled FIVE half marathons! That’s a lot! I’m over 200 pounds and when people see a big girl out there running and finishing a race it helps other people feel like if “SHE” can do it, so can I. I’ve completed 3 half marathons so far, and a few weeks ago I had my first race I didn’t finish. I’d been having medical issues all day (bloodsugars unstable, overheating, etc) and knew my nutrition and hydration were not where they should be. I’d been waking with shakes the night before…and I knew I might be in trouble.
I’m not ashamed of not finishing..that’s not my issue. My biggest issue was someone who MIGHT NOT KNOW ME might just assume it’s because I’m fat. The fat girl tried and didn’t make it…what a shame. They have no concept of what my body went through and what it took to even get to that start line for a 10pm race, and that I had to be there 2.5 hours early….or what hydration and nutrition means when you’re taking on 13 miles…or any of that stuff….they’d just see a fat girl getting picked up.
They might not have known that it was I who chose to stop because my body wasn’t cooling down properly and I’ve run enough to understand that my body would be in trouble…and I seeked out the medics and the sweeper van….but to a stranger standing on the sidelines, it was a fat girl being picked up by a sweeper van. They didn’t see nurses icing me down to bring my core temperature down…they just saw a fat girl not making it.
That frustrates me. Why do I care what a stranger might think? Do they really need to know I’ve completed 3 other races and I know what I’m doing? It’s nobody’s business but my own, but being a fat girl, it’s like I want this explanation splayed across my back so that other people go, — she’s a runner, she had a rough night — instead of — look, the fat girl got picked up.
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