Today we have a guest blog from Peter Sagal, the quick-witted host of NPR’s humorous weekly quiz show, Wait Wait…Don't Tell Me!, and national team captain of HSC’s charity athletics team.
Hello, I’m Peter, and I was a fat kid.
[Response: Hello, Peter.]
The playwright Jonathan Reynolds has a line in one of his plays that goes something like: “If, at any time in your life, you were overweight, you will spend the rest of your life obsessing about it.” This has been true in my experience. I was a chubby, inactive kid, always picked last to play kickball, always dreading gym, constantly overeating, because, I guess, that was one physical activity I could do well. I lost the weight in high school, during a dangerously obsessive period of dieting, then gained a lot of it back, and then spent, oh, the next twenty years gaining the weight, losing the weight, and constantly kicking my own behind about it, which is hard to do with love-handles.
Then, about four years ago, I started running seriously, and that turned into an lifestyle change, or obsession, or addiction, depending on how miserable it is outside at 6 AM when I head out to do the miles. On October 12th, I’m going to run my fourth consecutive Chicago Marathon, my fifth marathon overall. My goal is to run it (again) under 3 hours, twenty minutes, 59 seconds, and thus re-qualify for the Boston Marathon in April.
But that’s not the only reason I’m running it. I’m also running it because of the interesting hallucinations that tend to kick in around mile 23. But that’s not all! I’m also running as the honorary Team Captain for the Healthy Schools Campaign, a Chicago based non-profit that works to improve nutrition and exercise programs in schools. This to me makes wonderful sense, because what a kid learns while young stays with her. Despite the evidence in my own home, I don’t believe the natural state of the human child is to lounge on the couch watching “Lazytown” whilst eating chicken fingers. I think kids can be taught that good food is delicious, and that physical activity is far, far more than just another way to separate the cliques in school. Kids naturally want to run, and they naturally want to eat what’s healthy. We’ve managed to someone train that out of them, and HSC does its best to undo the damage.
Learn how you can run a race with HSC or check out my fundraising page, where you can make a donation to help me (and HSC) cross the finish line and make a real impact.
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