Brian and Amy Jenkins
"Running towards who I am." At StoryCorps, Amy Jenkins - who works in marketing for the Texas A&M System - talks with her father about how her lifelong interest in running helped her get through her divorce and now has blossomed into passion for a variety of high-intensity fitness activities.
- [Amy] It was always a part of me. Like I said, I would run occasionally, I would try to get back into it but it's different being married. You know, you have another person you have to take into consideration. And you know, he had already worked out for the day cause you know, he had football and they did stuff during the day, so when I'd come home and it's like I wanna spend time with him. So I had been at work all day, you know, when's time to run? You now, life starts happening, you know?
- [Brian] So it's still about him.
- [Amy] Life is always about him. But after he left I really started running a lot and I don't know how I was able to, because I wasn't eating. So I had no substance but I remember losing like ten pounds in a week. It was crazy. You know I don't necessarily have a whole lot to lose, but I really, you know, but my times were crazy. I was like in the sevens, seven minute miles.
- [Brian] Mhm.
- [Amy] You know for ten miles or whatever. It was crazy. But I just remember running and that was where I felt like I had power over my life. I had some type of control, you know. I felt confident. Because every other area in my life wasn't like that. It was just kinda fluid and I didn't know what was sticking. Running was definitely my escape. And I know originally I was running away from things. You know, I would run to try to clear my head you know, and just not me going through what I was going through. It was my escape. But then it ended up turning into, like this year. Well last year when I did the marathon, that was a life goal I had even before I met my husband.
- [Brian] Mhm, mhm.
- [Amy] And so I was able to accomplish that life goal, one and done. I checked that off the list, and then this year, it was really awesome because running became what I, like my future, it is what I'm running towards, instead of running away. I was running towards like who I am. And rediscovering who I am.
- [Brian] This has been kind of an open year for you, I mean January a mountain bike and you took advantage of that. We got some pretty good videos of that. And a four wheeler,
- [Amy] Yeah.
- [Brian] along with your running. Its kinda like how do you plan your weekend on what you're going to do.
- [Amy] People are always like, you always leave for the weekend. And I'm like yeah but I got all these things to do. You know I don't have enough time to do them. I can't just stay here. But this years been crazy, we went to Yosemite National Park.
- [Brian] Mhm
- [Amy] Then I went to Glacier National Park, Montana. Rocky Mountain National Park, Colorado. Shenandoah National Park, Virginia. Great Smoky Mountains in Tennessee. And then traveling, oh and then Joshua Tree, obviously this is where we just came from in California. Went to California twice and Yosemite, we stayed there for like a week, week and a half.
- [Brian] Yeah that was right after all the water washed away the roads.
- [Amy] Yes. Yeah we were, we decided to do the half marathon, and then travel the coast. I thought that would be so cool, to travel the coast, and get to see the cliffs, and just things I always heard about. And I would have really liked to have gone to Big Sur, but Big Sur was inaccessible.
- [Brian] Helicopter, maybe.
- [Amy] Yeah, very expensive helicopter. But I remember, I mean so of the roads were washed out like they had fences on both sides, where they had just opened up parts of the highway. Because there were landslides. Over in Big Sur I mean they had portions, like a quarter of a mile I think is taken out.
- [Brian] Yeah.
- [Amy] Like a complete road is gone.
- [Brian] Yeah.
- [Amy] And so we had to travel through a lot of that during that time.