With Hard work You will Find Your Greatness

I have never been the super talented one. You know the girl who is beyond pretty, has the amazing grades and is really athletic. If you watch Pretty Little Liars I think the character of Spencer Hastings best defines this type of girl. This was not and is still not me.

When I was in school I studied my butt off to do well, most nights I had to say no to hanging out with friends so I could get homework done, math was my down fall and often had to spend extra time studying that or I would have failed at it.

When I swam I put in more hours at the pool than my other team members. I had to spend extra time in the weight room so I could keep up with my teammates.

I remember one day after practice I was getting really discouraged. Everyone was leaving to go to a movie, or out for a bite to eat yet I had to stay behind yet again to practice flip turns. That night my coach said something that has stuck with me ever since “Hard work beats talent when talent refuses to work hard”.

Some days I feel like I have to work really hard to get through a workout, like my body is yelling for me to stop. That is when my heart kicks in and takes over. It is on these days I remember what Adam told me and I remind myself that if I put in the training and if I work hard my training will pay off on October 14, 2012.

What words of wisdom do you live by? What keeps you going when you feel like you want to give up?

The week of August 6 to 12, 2012 started off on an amazing note.

Monday was a holiday and I woke up at 7:00am and it was HOT, so I opted for a treadmill run to play it safe. I was so happy with myself because I ran it in 53:25 with a pace of 7’38”/mile. It felt awesome! I said to Meho, I wish I was running a 7 miler. What really made me happy about this 7 miles was I ran it faster than I ran my 10km back in May. It was a happy moment for me.

Tuesday, as usual brought me a weight workout in the form of Nike Training Club. I am seeing improvement with my muscles. I had my body fat and weight measured again. I have actually gone up in weight but I have decreased in body fat and increased in muscle mass. I have actually had to try to change the way my mind thinks because I see the number on the scale go up and it raises panic in me because my body all of a sudden thinks it is getting fat when in all reality I would rather be 148 pounds and 22% body fat than 130 pounds and 30% body fat. I think Western Culture needs to stop relaying on the scale so much to define beauty. In all reality a number on a scale should not define my self worth. I am really trying to transition from a scale to measuring tape. My body measurement may change even if  the scale doesn't.

The whole week I was really nervous for Wednesday to come. It was the hill runs. I was worried that I was not going to be strong enough or that my legs were going to say no. The hill we chose to run is a pretty steep hill. It has a set of stairs on it also because most people don’t opt to run the hill. We jogged out to the hill found a starting point and began our hill runs. Much to my surprise I did awesome with them. The first one was really hard because I was a little scared to sprint up the hill but after that it was great. The Nike GPS watch really helped me track each lap because it has a manual lap mode incorporated into it. My laps looked like this:

·               Lap 1: 3:11

·         Lap 2: 3:05

·         Lap 3: 3:16

·         Lap 4: 3:40

·         Lap 5: 3:33

·         Lap 6: 2.96

Much to my surprise my last lap was my fastest, but maybe because I was excited to get them done. I am really excited to do hill repeats again and can’t wait to improve on my time.

I did my 5 mile easy on Friday and yoga on Thursday because Nike had Find Greatness day on Sunday and I didn’t want to miss out on that but didn’t want to big of a gap between runs. My 5 mile on Friday was the best 5 mile I have ever run. Not in regards to time but in regards to how my body felt. I felt strong and fast. I ran 5.33 miles in 44:03 with 8’16”/mile. I was happy with this time and pleased that I dragged myself out of bed at 5am to do it. I am getting fast enough that I can grab an extra 15 minutes of sleep on 5 mile run days. Yay more sleep.

Saturday was a rest day and I took full advantage of it I slept in until 8:30 am. Meho and I went to see the new Bourne movie, not my favorite I felt it lacked a story line and after we went and bought our own TRX straps, I am really excited to be able to do TRX on my own and incorporate them into my Nike Training Club workouts. Planking on the TRX is hard. I am hoping this will help me get the abs I want.

Sunday morning I woke up at 6:30 am and it was painful getting up, it literally took me a full hour to find motivation to get out of bed. I didn’t actually get to the trail until 9:00am luckily it wasn’t calling for a hot day. Only a high of 21. My first 8.5 miles were amazing. I was feeling so strong, my legs were a little tired but nothing I have ever run through before. Around the 9 mile mark I realized that I was starting to run low on water but I had mapped out a path that had a water fountain and bathroom where I could stop. I was running with both my Nike GPS watch and my iPhone Nike GPS and went into the bathroom and forgot to pause the watch. It took me about 10 minutes to find a bathroom and fill up my camelback. I was doing really well until I hit the 13 mile mark. At the 13 mile mark I was at a time of 1:57:55 and a pace of 8’21”/mile but my iPhone was only at 4% battery. I began to panic because how was I going to record my run and then it dawned of me. I was also running with my watch. Nike Women thank you for sending me the GPS watch, without it I would not have been able to record my 16 mile run. At the 13 mile mark everything ended up going downhill for me because I had two up hills to run and both of them were pretty nasty. The first hill is a crazy half mile hill that is really steep, I started to run up it but felt super weak and sick feeling so decided that I would just walk it. At the top I began to run again until I hit the next hill, this is a gradual 2 mile hill and normally I can tackle it like a champ but yesterday it took everything I had left and I had to end up walking this one too. I was so disappointed in myself. I was doing so well at my 13 mile mark and ended up finishing the 16.49 miles in 2:47:22 10’09”/mile pace. I was so upset because it was the last 3 miles that really killed me. Meho and I have decided to change up our route. We are going to start by the hills and run them first instead of running them last. I think this will help me. Out a bit instead of having to face them right at the very end of my run. I was proud of myself for completing my mileage it was hard but everything I have been training for has lead me up to here.

Despite not having the greatest last 3 miles of my 16 mile run I was able to collect a lot of fuel for Find Greatness Day. I ended the day with 12,070 Nike Fuel, my biggest fuel count to date and a lot of that fuel was thanks to my 16 mile run. Thank you Nike and Sisters In Nike for giving me motivation to get out there and achieve my goals. 

I hope you have a great week.

Happy Training.