Kimmy Gibbler From ‘Full House’ Is a Runner. Here’s How It Changed Her Life – Runner’s World

The following is excerpted from Full Circle by Andrea Barber, with permission from Kensington Books. Copyright 2019.

I AM NOT AN ATHLETE. I AM NOT AN ATHLETE. I repeat: I am not an athlete.

I think it’s a common misconception that people who are athletically inclined were born that way. I’m here to tell you the opposite. I don’t like sports. I actively hate football. Gyms make me visibly distressed.

But I do like to run. And that makes me a runner.

It wasn’t always this way. I never played sports growing up. “Acting” was my after-school sport. P.E. was a chore, and I was notably relieved when I was working on Fridays and could skip the dreaded “mile” test.

I did not (and still don’t) have an athletic build. I was always lanky and awkward; muscles weren’t something I appeared to have in my body. My mom signed me up for tennis lessons one summer in an attempt to instill a sense of fitness in me, but this lesson became not only a sad display of my lack of fitness, but also my lack of coordination. Double bonus!

Sports just weren’t me.

Fast-forward to college, where I decided I was going to be on the women’s lacrosse team. Why? I don’t really know. It seemed like a cool thing to do. Those lacrosse gals seemed like badass chicks, and I wanted to feel as strong as they appeared. Plus, I had a couple of friends on the team and, as you may have already gathered, I am easily persuaded by friends.

So I ran out and bought all the equipment. I was fascinated by the lacrosse stick—what an unusual and curious apparatus! I lived on the West Coast, where lacrosse teams weren’t as prevalent as on the East Coast, which made the sport seem even cooler. I was ready to be. an. athlete!

I showed up for the first lacrosse practice on a cold Tuesday evening. I was pumped. Here we go! The coach announced that we were going to warm up with a two-mile run.

Blink. Excuse me?

The two-mile run was just the warm-up? Shit.

With panic surging through my veins, I ran the most painful twenty minutes of my life. I trailed behind the rest of the team, but somehow finished. When I was done, I did not collapse (yay!) but I did throw up (boo). And then promptly walked over to the coach to tell her I quit.

My entire lacrosse career began and ended in less than thirty minutes—just about the length of a sitcom episode.

I accepted what I believed to be indisputable. I was not, and never would be, an athletic person.

In 2012, Disney hosted their inaugural half marathon in and around the Disneyland theme park and the streets of Anaheim, California. The race would be geared toward women and was named after Disney’s beloved pixie with (fittingly) the ability to fly: Tinker Bell.

My friends were all over this and signed up on the first day of registration. They encouraged me to do the same, but I was not so easily convinced. I was intrigued, but never had I thought I could run thirteen miles. Me? The non-athlete? NO WAY.

Despite my self-doubt, I was curious enough to check out Disney’s Tinker Bell Half Marathon website. The first thing I saw at the very top of the web page in big, red, bold lettering: “RACE IS 94 PERCENT FULL.”

What?! The race is 94 percent full? I can’t miss out! FOMO was in full effect. That’s all it took. This clearly illustrates the power of persuasive marketing—I will sign up for just about anything if it’s at 94 percent capacity. Root canals, colonoscopies, tax seminars, half marathons: Where do I sign up? What can I say? — I’m a sucker.

The thought of running thirteen miles really terrified me. As a response to this fear, I trained really hard. I didn’t follow a specific training program, but I had gleaned from friends that I needed to be completing shorter runs (three to five miles) during the week and longer runs (seven to ten miles) on the weekends, gradually building up my mileage as the weeks progressed.

I had some difficulty: The first time I finished nine miles, I did NOT experience that infamous “runner’s high”—rather, I wanted to kill someone and then amputate my legs. The best training advice I got was to “listen to your body” and back off the higher mileage if my legs were screaming (which they were). So I looked for other ways to push myself. In fact, some of my best training took place on a single hill near my house. I would run up the hill, then walk down, run up again and walk back down, and repeat that five times. It wasn’t very long, distance-wise, but it really strengthened my legs.

When the Tinker Bell Half Marathon race day arrived, my goal, first and foremost, was simply to finish. The race rules stated that you had to finish the race in three hours, thirty minutes, or you would be “orange-flagged” and picked up in the Cart of Shame (not its official name) to be whisked to the finish line. The fear of this alone was enough to make me run faster. But based on my training, I was hoping to finish in three hours. Still, I had never actually run thirteen miles all in one go, so I really had no idea how my body would react.

My friends and I selected special outfits to wear on race day that included glittery makeup, tulle skirts, large fairy wings, and custom tank tops embroidered with “It’s not sweat, it’s pixie dust!” (Because it’s all about dressing up, right?)

We started the race with some light jogging—there were a lot of bodies out there. Before I knew it, though, my friends started running like bats out of hell. As soon as there was even an inch of clearing in the sea of humanity, they were gone. And we were still on the first mile. Whoa, wait a minute, who are you people? We even ran through the first few water stations, which means we were running while trying to guzzle water. That’s when I realized I might actually be running with crazy people. (Or professional athletes disguised as suburban moms.) Hello, adrenaline! That was the only thing carrying me through to keep up with my friends. Needless to say, those first two miles were painful.

Courtesy of Andrea Barber

One of the most difficult parts of trying to keep up with these rabid pacemakers was navigating my way through the slower runners: Oh, there’s a space! Oh wait, that space is gone. Can I really squeeze through there? Oh, what the hell. I definitely whacked no fewer than a dozen people with my wings, just trying to keep my team in sight. (I do feel bad about that.) Fortunately, my friends tempered their expressway pace by mile five or so, after which we were able to run at a much more reasonable speed.

Two miles of the course actually took us through Disneyland itself, which was such a highlight of the day. We ran through some of the backstage areas, usually only accessible to Disney cast members, and saw parade floats and Disney characters. We even spotted the Lost Boys riding the carousel! I anticipated seeing runners taking pictures with the characters, but I didn’t anticipate runners stopping and standing in long lines to take pictures with the characters. (What about the Cart of Shame, people? Snap a quick pic and GO!) Anyhoo, running down Main Street was a trip. The sun had just started to rise, the Sleeping Beauty Castle was in front of us, and the morning had an air of magic.

One of the best parts of the race was all the spectators cheering for us runners and seeing all of the creative, handmade signs they waved to encourage us. Most were inspirational, like, “Don’t give up! Remember all the reasons why you’re running!” But some were just hilarious, like, “Making this sign took a lot of energy, too,” and “Worst parade ever.” We took pictures with our personal faves.

By mile nine, I was really starting to feel the pain. We had only stopped running once for a quick potty break and walked for a minute or two through the water stations. Aside from that, we had been running the whole way. It was just unreal—I had never run for this long without taking longer walking breaks. I never thought I could physically do this.

At the mile nine marker, the race had set up an energy gel station, so we grabbed our GU and sucked it down. I took this chance to quickly check my phone and read some of the messages people had sent me. I had eighty-two notifications! I was overwhelmed. The combination of GU and feeling all the love from friends gave me a huge surge of energy. I honestly felt better during miles nine through twelve than I did throughout any other part of the race. Never would I have anticipated this kind of lunacy!

At one point I even passed my friends and said, “I found my second wind . . . I’m just going to keep riding it!” We each seemed to experience our highs and lows at different points of the race, which was actually a good thing. When I was dragging and hurting, their determination pulled me through, and vice versa. We were inspired to keep going and to go faster by whoever was having their second wind at the time. Teamwork, baby!

At mile thirteen, we rounded the final bend from the virtually empty backlot of California Adventure and out onto Disneyland Drive, where there were suddenly hundreds of people—fans, family, spectators, photographers snapping pictures. It was a surreal moment, and suddenly I realized we were in the final tenth of a mile of this race. I looked at my friend Laurie and shouted, “This is it! We’re in the homestretch!” I fought back tears as Revive’s song “Blink” started playing on my iPod—the song that had played at my grandmother’s funeral just a few weeks prior to this race. Everything came together in that single moment as I thought about everything that mattered most in my life: My family. My kids. My friends. The people without whom I never would have pushed myself or believed that I could conquer 13.1 miles. It was a glorious moment, nothing short of amazing. “Runner’s high” does not even begin to scratch the surface.

Lily, Laurie, and I grabbed each other’s hands, and with our arms stretched up over our heads, we crossed that finish line, two hours and forty-two minutes after we started.

At the risk of sounding melodramatic, this truly was a transformative experience. It’s hard to put into words; something changed in me out there on that course. To actually accomplish something you never thought you could do, and set a personal record, and create incredible memories with dear friends, and run through the Disneyland castle while the sun is rising behind you . . . well, all of that was pretty darn miraculous.

I guess it’s not all about the glitter and tulle, after all.

It was right about the time that I was finding joy in running that my marriage was falling apart. I didn’t realize it in the moment, but running was about to become my best therapy to help me through the hardest period of my life. After the Tinker Bell race, I was hooked on running and immediately signed up for two more half marathons. These races took place just a few months before the Talk; I firmly believe now that God or some higher being was laying the groundwork for me to use running as an outlet for coping with the shit storm that was brewing.

In the months following the Talk, my anxiety and depression ramped up to high. I was robotic and running on autopilot, a shell of my former self. It took all my strength just to get through the day without falling apart in front of everyone. Running became my lifeline. I needed those endorphins as much as I needed oxygen. I ran to empty my brain of all the constant negative self-talk. I ran to distract myself from the drama taking place in my personal life. I ran to feel like someone other than “Mom” or “Soon-to-be-Divorcée,” even if it was only for a few fleeting hours each week.

I was initially drawn to running because I could do it by myself. I don’t have to talk to anyone, and I don’t have to listen, which is soothing for an introvert and actually one of the ways we recharge our batteries. That silent part of my day is an essential piece of my mental well-being. But I have also come to appreciate the therapeutic aspects of social running. My friend April and I trained for a half marathon together, which meant hours of running side by side. Something happens when you run with another person; you find yourself opening up in ways that just don’t happen with other forms of socializing or group exercise. It’s a simultaneous physical and emotional catharsis that I’ve never experienced elsewhere.

Watch: Andrea Barber spoke with Runner’s World after completing the 2016 Los Angeles Marathon.

Often, April and I were too winded to speak and run at the same time, but the conversations that did flow were so open and honest. Topics that would normally be difficult to talk about found their way into our conversations with refreshing transparency. The running seemed to bring dormant emotions up to the surface. April had also been a single mom with three kids for many years—not because of divorce, but because she was suddenly widowed. Although our circumstances differed, we found many of our challenges to be the same. She shared details surrounding the death of her first husband and finding her way as a single mom before eventually finding love again and marrying her high school sweetheart, Tim. She reminded me that happy endings can be born out of the darkest of circumstances. Similarly, I shared feelings about my grief and divorce that I hadn’t ever been able to articulate before. The urge to communicate about this with her felt overwhelming, as if my words had suddenly gained momentum and couldn’t wait to come out. The running was strengthening our bodies, yes, but we didn’t expect that it would also strengthen our bond as friends and confidants. We hurt, we cried, we healed. Together.