My new job in SLO is as an administrative assistant for an insurance company. This was my first exposure to the San Luis Obispo culture. I learned early on that I wasn't in Kansas anymore. 


Gluten-free? What is gluten? You guys don't drink soda? Why are you wearing exercise clothes when you get back from your lunch?


I had entered a whole new world, populated with health-conscious people. Their idea of take-out was a salad from the local health food store. One of my coworkers actually brought cauliflower rice to work for lunch. HAH. That was my response. Organic smorganic. I wasn't made to survive on leaves and vegetables I've never heard of. The exercising during lunch thing really spurred me on to start running again, however, and I quickly developed a habit of running three days a week on my lunch. I went from no exercise at all, to running three miles Monday, Wednesday, and Friday through hilly SLO countryside.


About two weeks in, I had to stop. Shin splints had returned with a vengeance. I felt like my legs were painful stilts that sent jarring, cutting pain shooting up my legs each step I took on my run. My husband urged me to take a week off to let them heal. I took this advice (probably what I should have done way back when I was hitting the gym with Taylor) and impatiently hung up my running shoes for a while. Right about this time, my dad proposed that he and I run a half-marathon in SLO in April. I considered it, and accepted his challenge. He wanted something to train for, and I wanted something to get me skinny.


After my shins had healed, I began running again, this time with a purpose and a training schedule. After about a week, I was in pain again. I cried to my husband "Why is this happening to me? This isn't fair!" For once in my life I actually had the DESIRE to run and exercise. Why wouldn't my body let me refine it?? Joe assured me that everything would turn out okay, that I just needed to take it easy and we would figure it out.


Then, when all seemed lost, God gave me a miracle in the form of a rubber track on the college campus down the street.