In addition to December 25 of every year, Christmas comes to me once a month in the form of a Runner’s World magazine.
Receiving the June 2009 issue was no different. My eyes went wide as they do every month when the open door to my mailbox revealed the shiny gloss cover with mint pages that will be dog-eared in a matter of minutes. Just like always, I go inside of the house, toss the unimportant mail on the table (bills, ads, magazines, etc.), plop down on the nearest chair and zone out completely until I am done reading cover to cover.
It wasn’t until I reached the last page before the cover (page 116), however, that something different struck me. The article was a brief summary of a celebrity runner, Jennifer Beals of The L World, but it wasn’t the words that made me stop; it was her picture. My eyes analyzed the pretty lady in the orange top and black pants as my mind worked overtime to make sense of what about the image that made me stop. Then it hit me.
That is my body. (Not like my bod was photoshopped in there, but it was eerily similar to me)
Here I am with a slim waistline above big muscular thighs and arms that can’t make up its mind on whether they want to be lean and cut or puff out like little marshmallows. Recently I finally was able to accept my freak-a-zoid body, but it turns out, I have a runner’s body. Who knew!
Quickly, I flipped the pages back in an attempt to confirm my notion. Males and female models aside, it turns out, other female runners pictured in the issue also resembled the weird arms-slim waistline-big thighs body shape. Has my hypothesis been unscientifically deemed true?
On a recent interview with Hugh Jackman on Howard Stern, Jackman mentioned about training like who you want to look like. Well, it seems that I inadvertently trained to look like a runner, but that was never my intention. But then again, I never had a particular image I wanted to look like; I was more excited to see what my body would morph into. (Posting pictures of celebrities and models never made sense to me. You can’t look like someone else; you have a particular body shape… It’s about morphing into your own best body – now THAT is exciting stuff!!! Besides, photos are airbrushed and touched up so that exact result is unattainable. You might as well aim to look like Minnie Mouse for that matter.) Anyway, it’s an interesting feeling to know that this time I didn’t change my body to look like something; instead, my body altered itself to accommodate my passion: running.
How cool is THAT!


