Preppy Runner – Theodora Blanchfield

I get a lot of e-mails that start “I want to ____, but I can’t.”

Um, yes. You can. Once you get over yourself and your excuses, you can do anything you want to do.

How I do know this? How do I see straight through you? Because I used to make these same excuses, too. So I know you’re full of shit. Sorry.

(At the time, I sort of knew I was full of shit, too, but I couldn’t see a way out.)

So here’s why your excuses don’t cut it.

I can’t lose weight.

Nope. Don’t believe it. Anyone can lose weight if they put their mind to it. (Unless you don’t really have weight to lose in the first place.)

It’s hard, and it’s not always fun, but good god is it rewarding. And it can be fun, if you make it.

Losing weight requires sacrifice. If what you’re doing isn’t working, then you’ll probably have to change it. Believe me, when my trainer told me to give up bread and dairy, I thought he was crazy, too. I couldn’t fathom a life without either. But I wanted to lose weight far more than I wanted to eat a sandwich, so I gave up the bread and dairy. I also cut way back on happy hours and fried food and spent more time in the gym, and the weight came off.

I can’t run.

Unless you have some sort of muscular, bone or joint issue? Yeah, you probably can run if you really want to.

I have asthma and IBS, and I’m training for my second marathon. Ali has Crohn’s and is a running machine and training for her first marathon.

Amputees have run marathons. People in wheelchairs compete in marathons.

But you don’t have to run a marathon to be a runner. You don’t even have to be able to run for a minute to start running and call yourself a runner. Start with intervals, and then work yourself up to running more than you walk.

 

I can’t get any faster.

You’re not trying hard enough. (Or you’re being too impatient.)

When I started running a little over two years ago, I finished my first 5K in 35:39. That’s just under 12-minute miles. I was ecstatic just to finish, but I quickly wanted to get faster. In the two years since then, I’ve run hundreds (thousands?) of miles, always pushing myself to get faster, whether it be running with faster people or doing speed workouts.

I ran four half-marathons this year before finally meeting my sub-2:00 goal in Freeport this summer. I logged quite a few miles in between, and I failed to meet my goal the first four times around. I did speedwork. I pushed myself through four grueling races, and on the fifth, dug in deep and reached for that goal that had previously eluded me.

The speedwork wasn’t fun. Falling short of my goal wasn’t fun. Meeting my goal? Fun.

I can’t find a job. I don’t like my job. It’s too late to change careers.

When I moved to NYC a little over three years ago, I took the first job I could find. It was working for a legal publishing company, and it was far from my dream job. I wasn’t quite sure what my dream job was, but I knew it involved social media, and I knew it involved something that involved communicating directly with consumers. (The legal publishing job was a business-to-business magazine.) I wasn’t getting that experience at work, so what did I do? I started this blog so I could show employers that I understood and knew how to use and create success with social media. A little over a year later, I was doing social media for ELLE and Woman’s Day magazines, because I worked hard and showed how passionate I was about social media.

After my layoff, I spent a little time feeling sorry for myself but realized that sorry wouldn’t get me my next job. If I wanted to stay current, I needed to do it myself. So I’m doing freelance social media while I search for the perfect gig.

It’s never too late to change careers. It’s never too late to do what makes you happy.

I don’t have time to….

You don’t have time? Or you can’t make time?

Last year I trained for the Chicago Marathon while working a full-time job, keeping a normal(ish) social life, blogging, taking care of my dog, co-chairing a Junior League committee and doing whatever else I was doing at the time.

Jen and Gia are both moms that are training for the NYC Marathon. Emily trained for an Ironman while working full-time, often riding crazy distances like 50 miles before work!

(But also note that you can do anything you want, but not everything you want.)

I can’t make friends.

Are you putting yourself out there? It’s 2011, there are a million ways to make friends using the internets, if you just look.

What else do you think you can’t do? Why don’t you try? You’ll never know if you don’t try.

What did you think you couldn’t do and found out that you could, once you tried?