Flyer Profile: Kettia M
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| Kettia M |
I
have been active my whole life. For as long as I can remember, I danced and
played sports. I played soccer and danced all 4 years of high school and I
always remember how much I hated running and drills before practice. I could
never imagine anyone running for fun.
My gym rat days started in college. I went
to college in England where I majored in Fashion Merchandising and where I met
my husband who was a design major. Not much interest in playing sports in
college but staying fit was not a choice; it was a requirement for a fashion
major so I got my first gym membership. After college we roamed around Europe
for a couple of years until we no longer could put off getting a real job.
We moved back home to the states, got
married and I spent the next 6 years either pregnant or with a newborn or
both. Three children later I knew I had to get really serious about
fitness. Then something weird happened. I started to lose weight as if
magically. The first 5 or 10 pounds were great, but that quickly turned to 20+
pounds in less than 2 months. I was hitting the gym hard but not that hard.
Turned out I had Graves’ disease an autoimmune disease of the thyroid. One
of the most common symptoms is rapid weight loss, another is heart palpitations
so I had to stop working out and spent the next year yo-yoing between meds
until my doctors found just the right dosage to get me healthy again. I had
also gotten very weak and out of shape during that time.
It took some time before I started to feel
strong enough to work out again, and when I went back to the gym this time I got
on a treadmill –– a machine I used to pretend didn’t exist. I set some goals like
run 1 mile without stopping and quickly that became 2 and then 3. I found
myself running longer and longer on the treadmill until one day I ran 6 whole
miles on the treadmill without stopping. I went home and excitedly told my
husband that I just ran 6 miles at the gym and he said "that’s great hon', now
you can run a marathon!" To this day I am not sure if he was being sarcastic or
if he really thought I could actually run a marathon. But before I knew it I
had signed up for my first 10k (the NYRR Mini 10K), my 1st half marathon, and my 1st marathon
–– the NYC Marathon, which I ran raising money for Team for Kids. The year was
2008.
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| NYC Marathon 2009 |
Somewhere between battling Graves' and having
3 kids under 5 years old in the house, my husband and I started a business. We started a
preschool –– purely out of the desperate need to find childcare for our 1 year
old at the time. It took off fairly quickly and within 3 years we needed
to expand to a 2nd location. I was in the middle of that expansion in 2008 when I
decided it would be a good idea to run a marathon. I was super busy and
stressed. I was leaving work so late that the only place I felt safe running
was at the gym. I remember about a month before the marathon I was running up Cat
hill and had to stop and rest at the top and that was only 2 miles into my
planned 18-miler that day! I should have stopped the madness right then and
there and deferred, but I pressed on. Because I had raised the money, I felt
like I owed it to all these people who donated money for me to run.
So
I ran/walked that first marathon in 5:55. Ok, I mostly walked. Most people while
in the midst of race misery usually vow never to run another race, but not me.
Somewhere around mile 6 I knew two things for sure, the first was that things
would get very ugly for me that day and second was that I would sign up
immediately for another marathon as soon as I could crawl my way home from the
finish line.
And
so began my running journey. “What does it take?” was the t-shirt slogan that
year. I slept in that t-shirt many nights the following months and when I
didn’t want to get up or go out for a run I just had to look down at my pj shirt and
I was good to go. I ran NYC again in 2009 in 4:22 and I never walked once. I
was so pumped afterwards that all I wanted to do was run, I started looking for
6am running buddies on the NYRR site and that’s where Flyer Francine A found me (or, I should
say, saved me). Because right before she emailed me I had gotten myself a
stalker, but that’s another story. She invited me to run with the Flyers 6am group, and
the rest as they say is history. Let me just say 6am is such a special group!
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| With Khris D.P. and Jodie F At Francine's 50th Birthday Celebration |
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| With College Pal Cathy Ban |
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| At Big Sur |
My running has had its share of highs and
lows. Sometimes I am fast. Most times I am slow and other times I am injured.
But I keep running because I love it. Otherwise it wouldn't be worth it. I love
destination races and I see myself doing much more of that in the future. You
get to see the best parts of a city during a race. Running is so much more than
PRs and medals and I don't want to get so hung up on goals and numbers that I
miss the journey.
I still sometimes sleep in that shirt from my
first marathon because it's a sentimental reminder of how far I have come and
the lessons I have learned from running. When I want to give up on a tough run,
I still sometime ponder that question.
So what does it take?
For me it's a ton of patience, hard work and
a little help from my Flyers friends.
-Kettia M
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