All Pain and No Gain!

I used to be very active: I ran, swam and threw discus for school, played rugby for my university, county netball but a couple of years after playing rugby for a first division ladies team in London I dislocated my knee cap, had two knee operations and 18 months later was told I was free do ANY sport I wanted as long as it was swimming, cycling, walking or golf and absolutely no running. Imagine how soul destroying that was at 25 years old. So not to be hard done by, I did them all. Eventually I found myself back in a gym doing as much as I could including rowing, cross training and swimming and I had managed to convince myself that I was doing OK!
Somehow I could never shake the feeling of missing out on something. Five years later I found myself in pain, unable to breathe with a resting heart rate of 140bpm and was later diagnosed with sarcoidosis, an autoimmune disease that my father died of in the early ‘70s. Several years of drug therapy followed as well as a 30lb increase in my weight and by 2006 I was in and out of hospital with one ‘issue’ or another. Then came a new year when I moved to the US. I became so sick and tired of being sick and tired I “burned the book”. I wanted to be one of those people that I saw jogging on the Monon - I wanted to lose weight become really trim - wake up in the morning with a spring in my step … so I started on a new path. I signed up for the 2010 mini marathon!!!