Afoot and Light-Hearted...

There are people in my life that may never understand why I run and the lifestyle that I have adopted when it comes to overall health and wellness.  Remember, I ran (at least) 2 half marathons (plus dozens of 5 and 10-K races) when I was at my absolute heaviest weight of around 250lbs - I was literally the healthiest heavy girl I knew - which was a duel edge sword.  To have so much control and discipline when it comes to physical training but struggle on the nutritional side leads to so many feelings of defeat, failure, and overall depression.  When I asked for help and chose to have the gastric sleeve surgery in 2017, it allowed me to finally work to create the kind of person that I always knew I was - my outsides matched the inside 'inner beast' that I knew always existed. There has never been any shame in asking - anyone that thinks I took the easy way out remember this; I was running 13.1 at 250lbs - never forget that? WLS is only a tool and I respect anyone's decisi...

In the Spring of 2022, my husband was given a new job opportunity that had us relocate from our home for 20 years in Massachusetts to Colorado - 2,000 miles away!  Since that time, it's been quite a journey for our family and us. While our kids are pretty much grown and on their own paths, it was hard to say goodbye to the house that we lived in for so long as this crazy blended family. There are no rule books when it comes to blended families, and for better or worse - somehow we made it through to set off some pretty good humans into the world. So we put up the "For Sale" sign, packed up the house (and dogs), and drove to Colorado.  It was hard - did I mention that?  Earl had already been living in Colorado since May in order to start his new job; he flew back to Massachusetts so we could drive out to Colorado together with our dogs, Shelby and Seeley. We planned a 4-day drive in order to make sure we were not asking the dogs to be in their crate for unreasonable am...