Finding good reasons for trying Bloomsday

I have been “round” most of my life.

That is to say, I am not a particularly thin woman.

In a culture where being thin is equated with being both healthy and beautiful, it is a tough row to hoe knowing you are reasonably healthy but do not look like the cover of a magazine.

Earlier this year, a good friend of mine challenged me to participate in my first (and her first) Bloomsday. Being from Eastern Washington, Bloomsday has been a vague part of my consciousness for as long as I can remember.

I decided to take her up on the challenge and began walking, jogging and running on a more consistent basis than I have since college.

As I’ve gone through the training process, I started to consider my real motivation for participating in Bloomsday. Did I want to be healthier? Thinner? Proud of being able to complete the course?

I began to really think about my body; what I like about it, what I dislike about it, and how those thoughts affected my motivation to be a part of Bloomsday.

I will be the first to admit there are days when I think to myself, “Life would be so much easier if I looked like a super model.” While, deep down, I know it isn’t true, the idea still lingers.

So, struggling with my motivation for completing this challenge, and wondering just how many other women think the same thing, I went looking for statistics about eating disorders, disordered eating, and dieting as a way to gauge where I was on a personal level.

Some of what I found shocked me.

According to NationalEatingDisorders.org, 81 percent of 10-year-olds are afraid of being fat, 35 percent of “normal dieters” progress to pathological dieting and, of those who progress to pathological dieting, 20 to 25 percent further progress into partial or full-syndrome eating disorders, and 45 percent of American women are on a diet on any given day.

Which brought me back to my own questions about why I was accepting a challenge to be a Bloomsday-er.

With race day just two days away, I gave the matter some serious thought.

There haven’t been any dramatic changes in my appearance since I started preparing for Bloomsday. I’m not suddenly Heidi Klum.

But I am happier with myself.

I know I can run faster and farther than I could in January. I know that my left ankle is probably going to be a little swollen for a while, thanks to having sprained it at least twice in the last five months, and that’s OK. I know that when I look in the mirror I’m good with what I see.

Maybe that’s not necessarily progress by leaps and bounds but, then again, maybe it is.

If you are interested in participating in next year’s Bloomsday, I suggest you visit bloomsdayrun.org for more information about the race and training tips.

Pam Robel is the paginator for the Columbia Basin Herald. She finished her first, but not her last, Bloomsday on Sunday. Her coworkers are proud of her.