How does one even write an “about me”?
I’m part American and part Dutch; I left the US in 1994 to come live temporarily in the Netherlands and never went home. As I’m 50 years old, that means I’ve been in the land of clogs and tulips for half of my life. Part of that experience has been with my favourite Dutch person, Ron, aka Fonzie, the Hubs or Mr. Pie. I have two grown stepchildren and three cats as well. The cats live with us full time, The Boy Kid occasionally and The Girl Kid is living with her boyfriend, going to school and working.
I wasn’t always healthy and fit. I wasn’t always a runner. I’ve gone through periods of being at a fairly healthy weight and being quite overweight (officially obese). My biggest obstacle is actually myself; my coping mechanism to stressful and negative situations was always emotional eating but now that I acknowledge and recognize this, it’s getting easier to not always turn to food. Running is now my therapy and it’s done wonders.
I started running in 2009 to lose weight; what I didn’t know was how much more it would mean to me than that. In fact, I didn’t lose a ton of weight by running. I still want to lose weight (I am not quite where I’d like to be) by keeping my eating in check and have followed many diets in the past to get that under control. My theory now is that diets don’t work, but changing what you eat CAN work. I don’t judge anyone’s food choices but please don’t suggest I try Keto, Paleo, Shakes, Cleanses or Gluten-Free (or anything else) because I’m just not interested.
Running has changed my life and my perspective to challenges. At this stage I’m able to say “if I can run a marathon, I can do ________________” and that tends to work. Running has changed me into a determined and driven person and at times quite disciplined (I’d be lying if I said I was disciplined all the time – I am human after all).
In 2009 I never would have imagined running a 10KM race let alone a Half or a Full marathon. I only could imagine the 5KM distance. I started with the C25K program and basically never stopped. At the end of the 9 weeks, a person is meant to run 30 minutes in one go. I never thought I could do that. And yet, I did. After that, I was hooked! Since then I’ve run countless races, in all distances, up to the marathon distance.
And because I’m quite passionate about traveling, the running usually now coincides with racing in other countries. It’s an amazing way to see the world.
Running and seeing my body change, and more importantly feeling the change in my body and my mind, has made me a more active person in general. And I appreciate sports in general much more than when I was younger.
In addition to the “normal” job that I have four days a week, I am also a licensed sport massage practitioner (since 2016) and certified (to level II) mobility trainer. Running has also propelled me into caring more about the mechanics of the body and I get quite a lot of satisfaction out of helping someone not only with aches and pains from training, but also to remain flexible and offering advise to prevent injury from happening.