INSPIRATION ALERT! ‘My Hands Used to Be Enormous—Then I Took Up Running’
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For Ray Walston, even an act as simple as buying a pair of gloves used to be fraught with anxiety and embarrassment.
“My heart would race, my palms would sweat,” recalled the 36-year-old computer programmer. “And the way I was back then, that meant a lot of sweat.”
Other everyday activities were stress-inducing, too, from entering a tip on a credit card reader’s screen to high-fiving a friend or loved one. They’re acts that most of us take for granted, but Walston’s enormous hands made them difficult or even impossible.
“My hands,” Walston said, “used to be really gigantic.”
Until, that is, he took up running.
“A buddy of mine was training for a 5K and he convinced me to sign up and do it with him,” said the married father of two. “I’d never run a step in my life, but I thought, Hey, why not?”
That was almost a year ago. Today, Walston said, his hands are “normal sized”—a transformation that he attributes to running.
“They didn’t change overnight, but over time, as I kept up my running, I definitely noticed my hands were shrinking,” says the married father of two. “As my mileage increased, my hands decreased.”
Today, Walston said, he doesn’t think twice before waving hello to someone, tracing his hand with his children for a construction paper Thanksgiving turkey, or playing peek-a-boo with his infant nephew.
Walston said he keeps two photos on his desk to remind him of his hand-size journey. One shows him before he starting running, grinning uncomfortably and trying in vain to hide his huge hands in his pants pockets; in the other, he’s crossing the finish line of that 5K with his friend, his hands raised in joy.
“That finish line photo would have sounded like a nightmare to the old me,” said Walston. “Today, I proudly point it out—with my average-sized finger—to anyone who pops into my office.”
“I owe it all to running,” he said.
