She's not heavy, she's a runner!

Scott is such a problem-solver. We were talking about my medical school tuition, and how the dental school attended by a couple of our friends offers tuition waivers to the top two students in the class each year. Scott said, "It would be easy to be the top student in the class - you just have to get the highest grade on all of the tests." Oh, is THAT all? Okay. (But my medical school doesn't offer tuition waivers to the top students, as far as I know - so I don't have to worry about the incredibly easy feat of being the top student in the class.)

And the other night, we were discussing running - he and I used to run together when we were undergraduates, and I'm trying to get myself in shape so that we can run when he comes home. I don't want to make him run so slowly that his heart rate is approximately equivalent to his sleeping heart rate, you know? I'm not up to the distance that he's running, yet, and I was bemoaning that fact. He said, "If you want to run x number of miles, you just have to start running and then don't stop until you've finished x number of miles." Ohhhhhh! See, I didn't know that. I guess I was always distracted by the exploding lungs and the cramp in my Out of Shape Gland.

Scott has such confidence in me, though. He seems to think I can do anything. I love that.

Speaking of running, I used to run up to five miles a day (usually three, sometimes five) and then, I started having trouble with terrible headaches and shortly after that, Scott left for school, and everything just snowballed. Anyway, I gained weight. In January of 2002 I pulled myself together (actually, God pulled me together) and I started back to Weight Watchers and started my running program again, and I ended up with shin splints. I was complaining about them one day at work, and my boss said (I don't think I'll ever forget this exact quote), "Aren't you much too heavy to run?" Nice. It was such a defeating thing to say, that I still think of it when I'm having a particularly difficult run - in the back of my mind, I think, "Well, you're much too heavy to run anyway." And then I want to stop. What I probably should have done was challenged him to a run. :-)