The Reason I Exercise

So, it's really no secret that I love food. I mean, I have a food blog, right? So, in order to maintain a 100-cough-ahem-cough-pound body, I have to exercise. Though I used to dread this, I actually like it now. It makes me feel good. So much so, that today, I ran 13.1 miles. Voluntarily. Yep, I ran a half-marathon. Nope, nothing was chasing me, I just ran 13 miles for fun. I've been training for this for some time, and I completed it today, in a time of about 2 hours and 20 minutes.
This was a big accomplishment for me. In junior high and high school, I was an "athlete" in just about every sport my school offered: swimming, track, volleyball, soccer, softball and tennis. Except sports and I don't really get along. See, I suck at organized sports. Pretty much all of them. It's just a fact that I've grown to accept. A 5'2" rotund frame does not a good athlete make. BUT, with running, there's no one to compete against, except me. I can run, and the only person who cares about my time is me. I run fairly slowly, but I ran 13.1 miles today. That's a lot. It was a long training for a really big thing; maybe one of the biggest accomplishments in my short little life to date. And I'm pretty proud of myself. I did it. I put in the time and effort, and today I reaped the rewards.
I consider myself a runner. And runners are athletes, no matter how tall they are.