Jennifer at the Danskin Women's Triathlon near Chicago Photo: Mia Byrne

The Average-to-Clumsy Triathlete
by Jennifer Sader

Playing Hide & Seek with The Freshman 15
I was the weird exception to the Freshman 15 rule in college. Other people gained weight when they got to campus, but I lost about 15 pounds, partly because I'm a picky eater and didn't like the food, partly because I was walking everywhere, and partly because I started taking advantage of the Student Recreation Center and discovered that aerobics classes and weightlifting could be fun. This last part was a big revelation to someone who barely made it through high school gym class alive.

Average to Chubby Clumsy Conquers All
My junior year in college, I started dating Jesse (now my husband), who was a varsity runner on the cross-country and track teams. He talked about running all the time, and I listened as politely as I could but never found it very interesting because the idea of running was as foreign to me as space travel. I knew some people did it, but they weren't people like me. Jocks or virtuous skinny blonde girls ran, not average-to-chubby clumsy people like me.

I went to some of his varsity races and pretty much confirmed my suspicion that people who ran were another species than me. I outweighed most of the guys there, and the women were sweaty versions of the supermodels who taunted me from the pages of Glamour magazine. I sat in the stands and tried to pay just enough attention to have something to say to Jesse about his races while at the same time drawing as little attention to myself as possible. Since Jesse never came close to winning any of the races I watched, I really couldn't figure out why he was doing this at all.

Beyond the Bold and the Beautiful
I went with him to a small local 5K road race called Run for the Earth. There were still a lot of the usual suspects – scrawny men and women with impossibly long, skinny legs – but there were also a lot of very normal-looking people there. Some were even overweight. I saw a woman who was built a lot like me, maybe even a little heavier. She was wearing running clothes and stretching. I said hello and found out it was her first race. She was so excited she was glowing. After she finished, tired but happy, I quizzed her about how long she had been doing this and how she got started. For the first time, running seemed possible. After all, if she could do it, I could do it.

My 5 Minutes a Day Led to a 10K Finish Line
Jesse was thrilled when I asked him for help devising a training plan. He even gave me a few of his old race t-shirts to wear while training. I started out really slowly, running just 5 minutes the first time I went out. Because I was such a raw beginner, I saw improvement very quickly. For the first time I started to understand the idea of competing against myself and the clock instead of unrealistic ideals.

The first year of running was so much fun because I was constantly surprising myself with what I could do. Jesse suggested a race, The Blade 10K, as my first race because the names of all the finishers were published in the local newspaper. The distance was a little over 6 miles.

I spent over five months training for it. I still have the t-shirt from that race and the newspaper page with my name and time highlighted in yellow. I finished right in the middle of the pack, and it was the first time in my life that I was truly happy just to be average at something. Maybe I wasn't the hopeless case that I thought I was when it came to athletics.

Not-Good-Enough Flu
I kept running, but after that first big race, I started to have higher and higher expectations for myself. Suddenly, being average was just not good enough. I wanted to be faster and I wanted to be thinner. My body is not the ideal running body. Even when I have been at my thinnest, I have had a shape that's more hourglass than string bean. I started to train harder and harder to try to change this and eventually just gave up. I was getting sick all the time and wasn't enjoying myself anymore. I started to associate exercise with drudgery and decided that I just didn't like it.

About six months after I graduated from college, I stopped running. I always remembered my early successes, though, and over the years as I gained weight, I made a lot of attempts to get fit again. Sometimes I did pretty well for a few months, but I kept expecting quick results and always ended up getting discouraged. I just couldn't get as inspired again as I was by that first race. This went on for about five years. I kept looking at the dates on my old race t-shirts and feeling bad about how long it had been since I crossed a finish line.

My Comeback Years
In my late twenties, I managed to gradually get back into an exercise routine, and even though it didn't make me as thin as I wanted to be, I realized that I was happier when I worked out. I lost a little bit of weight, slept better and started to feel better about myself.

At the same time, I was working on my head. I decided that if this was the body I was going to have, I was going to have to find a way to be happy in it. I saw a therapist for a while, subscribed to a magazine that featured beautiful plus-sized women, and rediscovered my addiction to self-help books and inspirational stories. By this time, I had spent most of my twenties overweight and unhappy, and I decided that I wasn't going to spend my thirties the same way.

In the fall of 2000, I read You Don't Have to Be Thin to Win by Judy Molnar. It was about a 200-pound woman who was also a triathlete. Again, I thought, "If she can do it, I can do it." Immediately, there was no question in my mind that I could complete a triathlon too. That same day, I told my husband about my new goal, and was really relieved he didn't think I was crazy.

Photo: Mia Byrne

Determination Leads to Victory
In retrospect, it was really a stretch to think I could do it: I didn't own a bike, hadn't been swimming in years, and could run about one mile. But I didn't let any of that stop me. I found a goal race, the Danskin Women's Triathlon near Chicago. I had about nine months to become a triathlete.

There was a triathlon that went by my house when I was growing up, and I always thought that the people who did that race were superhuman. If I could do a triathlon, I figured that I would have unquestioned status as a fit and healthy person, no matter what my weight.

All of a sudden, I wasn't getting out of bed to exercise because I was fat, I was getting up to train. It made all the difference in the world. Any time I felt like skipping a workout, I thought about what it would feel like to cross that finish line. I made sure to plan for days off and easier workouts so that I wouldn't get burned out like I had before. The goal of the race was so energizing. I felt like I was being pulled along by an invisible thread. I even saw a nutritionist and got an eating plan, not just to lose weight but so that I could properly fuel my training.

Alert the Media!
As I gained more confidence, I started telling more people about my goal. Some people thought I'd lost my mind but others offered a lot of support. Some friends helped me learn to swim. My in-laws bought me a bike as a combination birthday and Christmas present.

I found a message board where a bunch of other triathletes struggling with their weight talked about training and nutrition basics. They helped me figure out what kind of strategic and protective athletic gear to wear for the race and offered lots of fashion advice too. Most tri clothes are designed for small woman. Their advice on what to wear and where to get it took the fear factor right out of my race day fashion phobias. It seemed like I found help everywhere I looked.

Her Royal Highness, Queen of Self Doubt
I had my first serious doubts the weekend of the race. My husband and I had driven 5 hours to Wisconsin with my bike and a trunk full of gear and decided to preview the race course. There were two huge hills on the course. I had only trained on flat land, so all of a sudden I panicked. I couldn't do it. I had gone through all this training, told everyone I knew that I was going to do it, driven all this way and I wasn't going to be able to do it. I was hysterical and sobbing and poor Jesse had to deal with this and somehow calm me down. He told me that no matter what, he would be proud of me.

Girl Power
Luckily I had a day full of pep talks ahead of me. The next day at the pre-race expo, Barbara Harris, Editor in Chief of Shape magazine echoed this when she said, "Your best will be good enough." Sally Edwards, author of The Heart Rate Guidebook to Heart Zone Training, told us to tell ourselves that "I am a great swimmer!" if we got scared.

Photo: Mia Byrne

Ordinary People
I wasn't afraid of the swim, but I substituted "cyclist" in my mind. I looked around me and saw all kinds of women who were just like me – ordinary women who had somehow decided to do something extraordinary. I decided that if they could do it, I could do it. I didn't come all this way just to give up. We got body-marked that day on our thigh and bicep with our race numbers, and when we went out to dinner, I wore a short skirt and a sleeveless top so that everyone would know I was a triathlete.

Extraordinary Bodies
The morning of the race, I got up at 4 am and put on my tri clothes. I looked in the mirror at my still-imperfect body and thought, "I guess this is what a triathlete looks like." I did the math and figured that before 1:00 p.m., I would be finished with the race and wearing my finisher's medal.

I am smiling in every picture taken during the race. I literally had the time of my life. The swim was tiring but I was surprised to see that I finished ahead of most of the people in my wave. The bike leg that had scared me was a piece of cake. The hills were not nearly the challenge I thought they would be. On the run portion of the race I felt a little sad because as exhausted as I was, I didn't really want it to be over. I thought I would never have another race as exciting as this one. But as I was finishing I knew this was just the first one. I had finally found something I loved and I was definitely not going to give it up.

The ripple effect
Finishing that race was one of the proudest moments of my life. One of the best things was that people began asking me for help training for their first races, figuring that if I could do this, they could too, and they're right.

Jennifer Sader is a freelance writer, part-time doctoral student and recreational athlete. She has completed several sprint and international distance triathlons and three half-marathons. Her next goal is to do the Columbus Marathon. She is supported in all her endeavors by her wonderful husband of ten years, Jesse Squire, who inspired her to do her first competitive event, a 5K run, at the ripe old age of 20. Email Jennifer Sader: jensader@yahoo.com

Photo: András