First off, thank you so much to everyone for all of their support in this journey. When I first began writing this I never thought I would get the response I have received, so thank you for all the amazing messages, they truly mean a lot. They have also pushed me to run faster and stronger over the past few weeks, so thank you for inspiring me as well!
So this week is a big week.....its my birthday week!!! Now I know that turning from 27 to 28 is not that big of a deal, but for me the "big" part of this week is leaving 27. This year was a turning point in my life. This will be the year that I ran four half marathons, the year that I lost 40 more lbs, and in all honesty (this sounds soooooo corny, but...) the year that I found me. I'm a little sad for this year to be over....its been a good one. Today to round out the year, I ran one last half marathon . I was using this race as a prep race for the marathon, but in all honesty I really wanted to redeem my awful times from the Chicago Rock n' Roll and State to State Half Marathon. My best time at the half before today was 2:17, and today I ran the half in 1:57. That's 20 minutes off my previous best time! I honestly didn't think I could run it that fast, it is averaging 8:55 miles. A year and half ago I had never ran a mile faster than 10 minutes....my best was closer to 11 minutes, so to be able to run 13 under 9 minutes a mile feels amazing.
We are less than five weeks out from the big day. Only one more truly long run stands in the way and that is the 20 miler. The 18 mile run went really well. I felt good afterwards and had no soreness, so I am feeling pretty positive about adding 2 more miles. Yet, I will have to say, it is becoming more and more of a mental battle every long run. It was really hard to push through past mile 15. I was starting to doubt myself, wondering if I could keep up the pace and finish strong, but with a little help from my ipod I was able to push on, finishing in 2 hours and 45 minutes.
On a different note, last week I woke up at 4am on Friday morning and was unable to go back to sleep. So I decided to catch up on the Biggest Loser. Although this show annoys me because of the game playing and the fact that they are completely cut off from real life, there are times I absolutely love it. For instance, they were broken into teams of three and each team had a time to reflect. One team climbed a near by hill and stood at the top, discussing how far they had come in their weight loss. Although it was over dramatized for television, I had never identified with anyone more in my life, and there I was at 4:45am by myself on Friday morning and I cried...a lot. I guess I never thought losing weight was so emotional. Every year on New Years I would buy the "Half Their Size" issue and think this will be my year...this will be the year I finally lose weight. And after 3 weeks, I inevitably would give up becoming bored and letting life get in the way. Now as I look back at who I was 2-3 years ago, I thought I was so happy back then, hiding the fact that I hated how I looked or how society treated people who are bigger. Sometimes I hate the fact that I wasted so much of my life being overweight, BUT I guess I would never have the knowledge I do now if I hadn't. I think my weight loss had never worked before because I was so consumed with just losing weight....I didn't have any goals other than to look like everyone else. Thank god I put my energy into a reasonable first....like a 5k....instead of just losing 20lbs. Its a lot easier to lose weight when you do not focus on the lbs!
Off to run....may have to add a few miles more this week because there is no way I will be giving up cake this week :)
xoxoxo
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