But, let me just confess to you a little something. I should start a blog "segment" where I tell you guys my secrets and confessions and start numbering them like those "quotes" you see roaming around on Pinterest, Instagram, Tumblr and Facebook (wait, did I miss a social media site...hmmm...let me think, oh yeah, and Twitter...brain hurts...makethesocialmediacircusstop for the love of Oden...ugh!) so I can feel über cool, but....don't worry readers, I'll spare you so I won't. Okay, so back to my confession, this "place" mentioned in the previous paragraph, was a bitch to get to. When we completed our first 5-miler, I got home that night feeling oh-so-good about myself and just knew, that I knew, that I knew I could do this. Then, the hiatus happened, and it was hard to get back on the metaphorical horse. It turned out to be somewhat of a two week break from serious training due to trips, death, sickness and injury and during those two weeks, I really questioned why I was doing this in the first place. I kept asking myself if getting up early, always feeling sore, adding additional workouts to help with the running, investing in running gear, forcing myself to run through tiredness, bad attitude and soreness and cramps, if all of this, was really worth it.
During that "down" time, I also thought about what running has done for me thus far. How my life has changed since I started running. For those of you who don't know me very well, let me let you in on a little secret: I am extremely OCD and very Type A, and therefor it can be justly assumed that I love making and/or checking off lists. So, as I thought about all the benefits of running I came up with a small but quite significant list. And this is what I came up with:
1. I finally, really and truly, love my body and feel sexy.
Do you know what it is like to be five feet, two inches? If you answered yes to this question that you know that apart from the inability to organically reach high resting objects and the occasional feeling of intimidation by the 14-year old who is already taller than you, you also know that people who are short, or using the PC term, "vertically challenged", don't have the luxury of gaining too much weight because it quickly shows. So that is already strike one against the short statured person. It becomes much harder, and second strike, if you were raised in a culturally food loving family like I was. Combine these two things and you end up with the perfect recipe for being, overweight, out-of-shape and generally dissatisfied with ones body. And well, that was me for most of my late teen, young adult and adult life. To be honest, this was me until about 1 year ago (I still have ways to go, but I am getting there...). Short statured, joyfully and adoringly loving food (healthy, non-healthy, greasy, I love it all), you can probably guess that I struggled with keeping my weight down for a long time. That is until I started training for the 5K. The more I ran, the stronger I felt and started to see the fat slowly melt off. I started to see my body change shape and my clothes started to fit better. Somehow, that made something click in my mind and it made me want to start seriously watching what I eat. So, I am mindful of what I eat, yes, I still will allow myself to have brownies and cookies and fun stuff, but always keeping in mind my ultimate goals and along with all the running I am doing, seeing some major changes taking place in my body. I feel good and am confident in my skin and I feel sexy as hell. If only for this reason, I told myself I could never allow myself to quit.
2. Running makes me feel like I can do anything.
When I started this running journey I could barely run 60 second without feeling like I was going to pass out. Today I am living in a surreal type of reality where last friday I completed my first six-miler, I find myself halfway done with the training program and in 46 unbelievable days, I will run this 13.1 miles. Its amazing what my body has accomplished! I go from 60 seconds of straight running/feeling like death to running for over an hour. This is un-real! This feeling of accomplishing the "impossible" propelled me to think about the other areas of my life where the limitations I see might actually be self-imposed. I am slowly detecting and eradicating those limitations out of my life and challenging myself in new ways. I don't know how else to explain it, other than running makes me feel like there is nothing in the world I can't do. I think part of our human condition is to guard ourselves from failure (pain, disappointment, etc), so we analyze and make "educated guesses" at those things that we perceived to be potential failures and then we stay the hell away from them. With running I have found myself doing what I thought I would never be able to do. Pushing further than what I thought I could. In the words of our "beloved" R Kelly, running makes me feel like "I believe I can fly..." and "soar"and all that jazz. I just now realized, that I could have summed up this entire paragraph by just simply stating that running gave me confidence, none the less, hopefully you enjoyed the extra reading.
3. My mind is being "worked-out" as well!
I have been meaning to write a blog post about attitude and running, I was going to call it "Check yo attitude, yo!" Now, that I see it typed out, it sounds retar...err...I mean, super duper dumb and goofy. (Sometimes I just don't know if I am straddling the P.C line or if sometimes I cross it...) Due to the fact that Mr. Writer's Block decided to sit his fat ass down on my brain in protest and thus making the task of writing daunting, I never actually got around to writing that post. (phew, I think I dodge a big one, especially with that dumb ass post title) Don't worry faithful friends, I will talk about it here. A while back my BFF, Sweet Missy (first mentioned, here), sent me an awesome book, I think the day she found out I was training for a half-marathon. Yeah, I think she got that excited... Anyways, I am not through the whole book yet and I won't go too much into the content of the book, but I do want to say that it was a great introduction to the world of the marathon trainer. So far, the thing that has stuck with me the most is how much the authors and guest writers talked about the power of the mind. It was in the first several pages of this book that I learned the term, "Locus of Control."
"If you believe that you are mostly in control of the events in your life, you tend toward what psychologist call an internal locus of control...it doesn't matter whether the events in your life are REALLY in your control or not; it only matters whether you THINK they are...When it comes to training for a marathon, it helps a lot to adopt an internal locus of control because you are going to need a lot of determination and motivation to get this done."
A couple of pages later, I read:
"Change your thoughts or actions and you change your reality. Think what that means...you are the architect of your life. You are the one who takes the raw materials and experiences and constructs the structure that is your life."
These words were seared into my heart and mind and I chose to believe in the words and try to apply them to my life to the best of my ability. I would sometimes just mentally repeat and repeat how I knew I could do this, how I had the physical ability to finish. I had found my "locus of control." It is this "locus of control" that propels me out of bed the majority of the mornings. It is what pushes me "just one more step" forward when legs cramp or my uterus is angry with me (I throw my fist up at you, Monthly Red Monster, curse you, curse you I say). And without really meaning to, this new way of thinking leaked into other areas of my life. Even when things don't go exactly as planned or surprises are thrown our way, I can somehow "trick" myself into thinking everything is or at the very least will be okay and then like "magic", somehow things really do start to look up. With running I remind myself to "enjoy the moment", "to find joy" in the pain and discomfort and now find myself telling myself the very same thing for the other areas of my life. Its extremely empowering to think that my reality is what I tell it to be. So, maybe now you understand why I made such a broad statement in bullet point number two, I feel like I can at the very least attempt anything. Nothing stopping me, but me.
Months later, and 100+ miles later I find myself super pumped up, nervous, excited and grateful with this journey thus and no longer is this goal daunting. My mind, body and spirit will forever be grateful for what running has given me. I feel strong, I feel like a runner and proud to say that in 46 Days, 19 Hours, 36 Minutes and 24 Seconds I will run in my first half-marathon.
As I finish this post, my little family anxiously waits for me to say its, "Beach Time!" So, as much as I love our little "chats," I must end this for now, but leave you with this question:
What has running done for you? How has your life changed because of running?
Love&Hugs,
Bella
