10 Miles Done!

June 14, 2014

Well, it’s been a while since I published. Last week my trainer pushed me hard to build strength. He had me do ten sets of stairs on a hot Sunday morning.

After the first one, I asked “how many are we gonna do?”

He said “Ten.”

I said how about five?”

He said “You can do this. It’s all about the end result…”

Inside I thought, it’s not gonna happen, but believe it or not? I did it!

That week I had run a full 6 miles, and although I wanted to quit at 3 I managed to push on through, and a motivational message at mile 5 helped me push on through for the whole 6. If I would have started earlier that day I would have made it through 8 I’m sure, but I didn’t.

Anyway, he challenged me to do 10 this week. I thought, I don’t know if I have that in me, and all week I was full of both dread and excitement, anticipation and fear. I was also concerned about how I would fit it into my schedule. Could I possibly do it before work? Could I do it on Saturday? Since Sunday was Father’s Day I didn’t’ think we were gonna meet since my family was celebrating at the beach for brunch so I thought maybe I’ll get it done Saturday morning. But as luck would have it, I jumped out of bed Friday morning, my normal early morning study group had been canceled for that day, and at 5:30 I found myself headed out the door, determined to give it a try. I got three miles in under my belt before I hit the track at the high school at 6:15. Only 21 outside laps, piece of cake I thought? I had my trusted iPhone with lots of podcasts downloaded and counted down the laps thinking wow, I might really do this. At lap 13 I thought, well if I could speed up a little, I would have these 3 done a simple mile in less then 15 minutes and then I would be in single digits. And it kind of worked that way. The only problems I really had was at one point I ran out of podcasts and had to go into streaming mode, which took about a half lap to set up, but I got it. I was a bit concerned that school would start and the kids would be coming onto the field for PE with 5 laps left, so I thought maybe I should head back home. I did 2 more quick laps. It was getting late and I still had to get to work by 9. So at 7:25 I hit the street again with 1 mile left. I got stuck at light with a crossing guard and high school kids everywhere, but I looked at my Runmeter said ¾ mile to go, I got this and ended right at 10 miles even at my next traffic crossing!

Feeling so good this morning. And I was so worried that I would fall over at work or cramp up but it actually wasn’t bad at all.

All I can say is if I can do this you can too!