“What, me, an athlete?” Why I call myself an athlete on my professional website.

​Athlete. There it was, courtesy of my web designer, parked right under my professional byline in the first draft of her design for the site you are reading right now. My reaction? I can’t say that. I don’t win anything.
 
I am a member of the group that’s affectionately called in the running world the “midpackers.” (Unless you’re an Olympian, that’s basically all of us, truth be told.) I was a plodder for a good long time, trying to stay at least a little active through college and my twenties. Then at some point I more or less stopped running completely as I got heavier and heavier due to all kinds of work and life stress in my mid-thirties. Running just wasn’t fun anymore.

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