So when I asked Jen to meet me at Cannonball Café, Loshusan, I already knew what I was having for breakfast.
Ensuring I got there a little earlier than her, since she is usually on time, I ordered another favourite of mine, hot chocolate. She was present before my hot chocolate came, we hugged and I told her we had to order before she answered my questions as I was starving. I asked her if she had eaten since morning , "Yes, I'd been craving soup so my Dad had made some that morning." I quickly placed my order of pancakes with egg and bacon, and allowed her to filter through the menu to finally settle on "I will have the egg-whites with whole wheat toast no butter and green tea."
This left me laughing as I knew she disliked eggs but had made the lifestyle change to accommodate her clean-eating challenge for August. I had to commend her for completing her clean eating challenge for August. She went on further to comment on her general fatigue, as she has been running almost every day for the last two or so months.
Ladies and Gentlemen Meet Jeniel Answer.
If you follow me on instagram, you would have seen I gave a shout out to her.
When I asked her who was Jeniel, with a chuckle, "Wow, that's a hard question." And then matter-of-factly stated, "Jeniel is miserable, I am. I think I have a type A personality which makes me miserable but then I'm still sweet sometimes. You know that sour pop commercial?" No I didn't, I really had no idea where this was going, "The candy is sour and the candy ties the guy at the bus stop and he makes him miss the bus, but after he has made him miss the bus he makes it all better? Well I'm the sour pop- I think I'm an okay person under my hard exterior."
After I was through laughing, and gathering my thoughts over a sip of my hot chocolate, her green tea arrived.
"No just Jen." she shared when I asked her if she had any nicknames, we then segued over into another conversation that wasn't suitable for the general public.
Her passion for fitness is very apparent as she straightened herself in her chair and smiled when I switched the conversation to her childhood and co-curricular activities, "I danced, I swam, I ran, the only extracurricular activity I didn't do was karate, and music-I'm not very good at music. I was a part of the Little People and Team Players Club, Cathy Levy, I was their youngest member at the time at age 6. And as time progressed I got lazy."
Jen's lazy had become borderline hypertensive and her acknowledging she had put on too much weight now in her adult years."I just never felt like me. So I got up one day and hauled my ass to the gym. It was something I was saying for a while and I never made an effort. But saying it for a while I started buying gym clothes and sneakers. I went to the doctor at the end of February 2014 and I was 182 lbs. 5'4''.
It was something I was grappling with before; I didn't need to hear the number to say I was going to go to the gym."
"My first day at the gym was March 25, 2014, it was a Tuesday. I had never really gone into the gym, it was something new to me. Going on a treadmill and elliptical was new to me. The girl that worked in the Manor Park Express Fitness at the time had helped. I think she realised I didn't know what I was doing. And she said let's work out together. We did half hour of cardio and then we did some workout with 8kg kettle bells and that was heavy then for me. I don't remember what else I did
that day. I don't remember how I felt, but I remember the date."
It's been clear that once Jen makes up her mind about something, she doesn’t need much convincing. "I just said I would try and go 4 days of the week, except Fridays as that was my time to chill with friends and just relax, I was there on Saturday mornings."
"Running was just something else for me to do. You and I had a conversation about running and I asked you how you joined and you shared the email address. My first run was Thursday, because somewhere between Monday and Tuesday I didn't want to pen an email and my intention was to send you an email and I accidentally started to send the message to Laurel instead of Laura. Which was pure coincidence that she had also just sent an email to them too." Jen has many times shared her story of driving home at four in the morning and wondering what the people running on the road had against their bed. It's one of those stories that come up time and time again when we consider we are now those people.
She tells me , "I have no regrets. Not even when I'm dead tired, or not even on my first long run and I was deading. It was a 5K the morning of my first run and I was dying at work. When I was driving to the meet up I only saw one dog and two street sweepers and now I find myself convincing people to run. It's almost a year ago. September 18th. My anniversary run." As she giggles to herself she quickly pulls out her phone while she asks me what day does that fall on? It
will be a Friday.
"Running is a different energy. Everything about it is different, the pain is different, the frustration is different. There is a sense of fulfillment because I get to lower my times each run or make it better. I look forward to race days to make it better. I set a goal time and I look forward to running that time. Sometimes it doesn't happen but I can't be too bummed.
Even if I did better than my last run but not the time I wanted, I'm not too bummed."
When I asked her about how she does it, she quipped, "Gym is something I had to do for me. It's something I had to do. I have to get up to go to work in the morning, so now I have to get up to go to the gym. I made it a priority and a necessary part of my life." She continue, "Right now I'm not going to the gym as much but I'm running over time, in preparation for my first official marathon, I am not observing my rest days!"
She was quick to spill the beans on what a typical day looked like for her now, "Most mornings start with a run, I go home and prepare my meals for the day. Breakfast which is fruit and yogurt/ oats and yogurt and I'll find a snack sometimes a snack is egg whites or some protein like I started to buy Martina's (@CleanTreats_ja) protein cake, which are awesome and then around 1:30 I will have lunch, which is veggies and protein or good carbs, which is usually chicken or fish since that is
all I eat, dinner I sponge off my father, but I play with it, or if I don't eat all my lunch I will have it. I try not to skip dinner."
She laughingly pointed out "The fact that I actually like it." As one of her biggest surprises to date. "I
have a friend who keeps asking me, what do I mean when I run because I don't even walk fast. I'm still amazed that, Hey I wanna run! When I'm on vacay, my step dad plays football on a high school field but I will go and run on the 400 m laid track. It is boring, but I will try to excite myself, running different lanes or whatever."
"To date I have lot 42 lbs. When I started working out I wanted to be healthy weight,140lbs, but it not cutting it for me right now, so now I want to work on a leaner me, my goal has changed."
Jen's advice
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Just go. You don’t have to wait on anybody or anything, if you want to, just go. Enjoy yourself. Challenge you.
You can follow Jen's fitness journey on her IG at @answerjen.
