"I Just Got Passed By the Fat Chick!"

or "Just Because I’m Fat Doesn’t Mean I’m Out of Shape"

I love hiking. It calms me. It makes me feel free and relaxed. It makes me forget my stress. It helps me do some deep thinking while getting some exercise. Now, if I could only figure out how to make everyone else disappear.

I’m not a small woman by any means and with 50 extra pounds on me, I think people are surprised that I can walk the 2.7 mile path that has a fair number of hilly parts. I usually walk it not once, but twice. Maybe it’s just me, but on several occasions I’ve passed someone and within 50 feet, they started to jog until they passed me. Don’t get me wrong, I think it’s great that they can jog. I miss jogging and if I could finally get motivated to lose another 20 pounds, my knees would tolerate jogging again. But that’s a different post for a different time. The problem is that they jog by me and then stop jogging about 20 feet in front of me. Once again I have to pass them. And they never jog on the uphill; they always jog past me on the downhill so I end up passing them . . . again . . . on the uphill. It messes up my pace.

It doesn’t help that I’m secretly competitive. I certainly get a sense of satisfaction from kicking their ass again. But why do people have to be that way? I walk that path a couple of times a week. And usually I do two laps. I also hike more rural paths a couple of times a week in the hills in the county. So I’m not in horrible shape.

Rather than letting it really get to me, I'm trying to see the silver lining in things as I have a tendency to bitch and moan about a lot of things that I see. So maybe I can just say that this is one of those times when I shouldn’t care what people are thinking (or doing) and think about the extra strenuous workout I just had because of those people and how beneficial that is to my health. At the same time, I can still secretly hate them and laugh at them in my head when I pass them for the second, third and fourth time. Ha ha ha. You got passed by the fat chick, and now you have to watch my jiggly butt.

Enjoy the view.