I am not an athlete, I don’t even play one on tv.  Truth be told, I’ve never been an athlete, sure, I played sports in high school, I even made the varsity teams, but that was more a lack of competition than being any good.  I loved team sports for the camaraderie, the social aspects and always having somewhere to be.  If you had to go to practice, you could skip out on those hours after school where nothing was going on and my friends were mostly getting in trouble.

I may not be an athlete, but what I am is a strong, healthy woman.  The scale hasn’t been my friend since I had my second child at age 24, so it’s been a quarter of a century since I liked my weight.  I don’t expect I will ever like my weight again, and that’s ok.

More importantly, I have discovered that I like myself.  I have endurance, staying power, no matter what I am doing.  In this, my fiftieth year, I have decided to be stronger, to use that endurance to my advantage and build my strength, and in that decision, I discovered that I have the best gym in the world available to me on almost a daily basis.

Each week we park on some of the most interesting properties, privately owned four-wheel drive parks.  There are trails and rocks and puddles everywhere.  There are birds and fish and deer in almost all of them.  Some have snakes and lizards, some have coyotes, all have fresh air.

A month ago, I started walking, not just flat ground around the neighborhood, but up and down hills, we were in Temecula at the time.  Then we moved out to Johnson Valley and I walked the perimeter of Hammertown every day.  Now we are at the Great American Park in Auburn, Alabama.  Josh has been setting race course all week, my goal has been to see if I can follow his arrows.  Friday morning the course will be set completely, I’m going out in the morning before the racers are here to see if I can manage the whole thing.  It’s 4.03 miles up and down rocks and through puddles, through trees, through brush and stickery plants.  I know I can do it!