My mom has become involved in competing in marathons for everything from cancer to amoebic dysentery. She trains by going sometimes 8-12 miles a day. It's a pretty grueling distance to travel. Her poor feet are mangled and blistered, but she is inspired and keeps her focus on all the sick people she is helping. A steadfast philanthropist.
Every morning, no matter how hard she partied the night before, she gets up, slips into her crocks and begins her training. A bona-fide modern-day Prefontaine. She begins her warm up with Richard Simmon's Sweating to the Oldies (she rotates through volumes 1, 2 and 3 throughout the week). She turns on Regis and Kelly and hops on her manual powered POS treadmill she overpaid for from some tweaker on craig's list. She has it perfectly timed so she knows that when Regis and Kelly is over, she has walked a whopping 1.5 miles. She puts on her pedometer and continues her errands the rest of the day. She'll walk to the library to check her facebook, walk to the grocery store, etc.
I overheard her telling her friends and family over the phone about her training schedule. If I didn't know better, I would think she were an honest injun, iron-woman. She tells them of her blisters and pulled muscles, but leaves out the details that--oh, yeah, by the way, these are WALKING half-marathons, she's "competing" in.
Her Aunt finally got sick of my mother bragging about how hard she is training and her subsequent complaining about aching feet and legs. So her Aunt suggested to her, "How about getting some real athletic shoes, instead of those crocs?" My mother immediately defended her cherished crocs and argued they could not possibly be the reason for her blisters. And her logic is, if pain is beauty, this must mean she is a supermodel! Yet, my mother really values her Aunt and her expertise so she decided to invest in some more tactical foot attire.
My mom cannot bear spending more than $15 for a pair of shoes, so her first stop, and only stop, of course, is the thrift shop. She prefers the fact that the gym shoes she's trying on have already been broken in for her, so she doesn't have to do it herself. Finally she unearthed a pair from the giant rancid heap and a dove descended down upon her and she knew these were the ones. Never mind that they were a size and a half too small (and never mind that the dove was actually a pigeon which had migrated it's way into the store). My mother was just going to have to go sockless to make the fit. And for cryin' out loud, if these people she was helping had to live with some insufferable disease every day, she would suffer with them. True empathy.
So next time you're at the gym working out "just to look good," keep up with the Kardashians or Ronnie from Jersey Shore, think of the people who may be disabled and can't. (And next time you're shooting up those steroids to grow muscles and shrink your testes because you think they look too saggy, think of those who have to take steroids daily to keep their illness at bay.) Think of the diligent, selfless people out there exercising for a cause in crocs and used tennies, and at least get a Chinese or tribal symbol tattoo to raise awareness.
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