Meet Chrystal Fuller

Name: Chrystal Fuller
Age: 42
Location: about an hour outside of Halifax, Nova Scotia
Makeover Goal: Learn to run fast

The trouble with being a tortoise:  All my life I have been fast at things – talking, making decisions – you get the picture. But when it comes to running, it’s a totally different story. I also have always been the biggest, or at least close to it. I was taller than my grade 4 teacher, taller than my girlfriends, taller than  pretty well everyone until grade 9 – even that kid who failed two grades was in my class. That coupled with the fact that I am just plain big anyway (I wear size 11 1/2 shoes) and am overweight makes me stick out like a sore thumb.

I have always been an active person but felt awkward as I am overweight. I played baseball and swam competitively as a youngster but these were sports where you did not need to be speedy to excel. However, I was starting to find activities more difficult to do, so I decided to take up running. I quickly found out that I am a tortoise. When I ran, people would actually say things to me like, “you need to run faster” as I jogged by them, or “you’ll never lose weight if you run at that speed.” I once was running in Montreal and even got a “trop lentement” from an old man.

Two years ago, after my best friend was diagnosed with stage 4 breast cancer, I decided to lose weight and lost 70 pounds. I also started working out more regularly and took running more seriously. Since then, I have run a 10K and a couple of shorter races and really wanted to work up to a half marathon. This past summer I had worked my mileage up to about 15.5 K and thought that I would be able to do the half. Then I ran with some other woman who had never run more than 5 K. I told them to run slower so they could run longer and we set off, and I could not keep up. Even after the 5k spot where they usually stopped they walked for a bit and started to run at what they considered a very slow speed and they still finished the total run before me. I arrived at the end of the run in tears and feeling very discouraged. All the training and hours to build my distance, I thought my speed had improved, and these women who had never run this distance just kicked my butt. I dropped out of the half marathon and have had a very hard time motivating myself to run. As a person who is fast at almost everything else in life, why do I need to be so slow and lumbering? I want to complete a 10K in less than an hour and do a half in less than 2:20 but that seems impossible.