Running that race...the MARATHON

 

Moms, have you ever felt like some days you are superwoman and can do everything and then others the allusive slug that cannot seem to get anything right? Right down to not being able to find which sock goes where? I am raising a hand in my head as I type this. 

In July of 2018, I made the biggest most important decision of my entire life. Weighing in at 183 pounds and being only 5'2" tall, I decided that my life absolutely needed to change. All of the time I spent just living from day to day needed to change to actual LIVING. What I was doing wasn't actually LIVING...it was surviving. Research says it takes 30 attempts for a smoker to quit smoking. I thought this to myself every. Single. Time I wanted to get healthy and failed. Except, my attempts were more like a million, it felt like. But one day in July of 2018, I decided I was done, and on my evening walk, I decided to run. I literally laugh inside, saying, "I decided to RUN, "...as though I was running. 

My first mile that day was over 16 minutes long. I felt like I was going to puke up a lung. It took me over 50 minutes to complete three miles around the entirety of my subdivision. But the next day, when I went out, I did it again. Then the next day, again, and again and again until I could run a mile without stopping. 

In November of 2018, I ran my first half marathon of 13.1 miles in two hours and forty-one minutes. After that race, I decided I wanted to take off the feat of running the full thing. The journey to the half marathon was NOT EASY. Those words, NOT EASY, CANNOT be stressed enough. My diet had to be adjusted because my hair was falling out due to lack of protein, toenails were ingrown, shin splints were debilitating. But I kept going. 

In April of 2019, I ran my first marathon. 26.2 miles. I have never felt so much pain and joy in my life as I did crossing that finish line. I literally cried crossing because I had just done what so many people told me I was crazy to do or what I couldn't do. You see, this journey was not easy... My grandfather (who truly was my father) passed away just one month before, and just one month after the race, I ended one chapter of my life to begin a better life. The trials and journeys are what make us who we are. The people who try to tell you that it is impossible and can't do it are simply wrong. Ask yourself what you want to do...and then just do it! That power lives entirely within your very soul, and that is the most powerful place of all. You just have to believe it.