Runner's High

Oct 13, 2017
4 min read

This week is homecoming week, which includes a full week of dress up days where we all look completely ridiculous, but the students love it. I also love anything to do with school spirit, and, of course, I participate. I accept the random eyes scanning my outfit when I walk into the hoity toity elevator with a Wonder Woman t-shirt on. We also get to wear jeans everyday. If you aren't an educator and you're reading this, you probably didn't get as excited as all of the teachers out there. JEANS EVERY SINGLE DAY! For some reason, this is an educators high. If you want perfect attendance from staff on campus, offer a free jeans day. Did I just say free? Yes, because some people on campus will literally pay to wear jeans. It's always said to benefit a good cause, and it always does, but I highly doubt anyone knows where their money is going. With all of the jeans days, I needed new jeans. It's literally so silly. The jeans I have on today are actually one of my favorite jeans ever - they accentuate my curves. Get it gurl!

I am also training for a full 26.2 mile marathon. I know me typing out the mileage seems repetitive, but some people aren't sure how many miles it actually is. There is so much pressure that comes with training. I know the reward at the end is huge, but the internal conflict that comes with training is something you never expect. I started running in college because I was overweight and very unhealthy. My mother started running when my sister, Bonnie, went off to college. I guess she had "empty nest" syndrome. I remember she would be out for hours running or walking with her friends, as I would stand at the end of the driveway begging her to come in every time she passed our house. Once again, I probably neglected my math homework until 10 o'clock at night and needed help. I decided to start running my last year of college because it seemed that was the new bonding experience for my family and I needed to kick my butt into gear. My mom and Bonnie would run, my dad would get the free beer tickets at the end, pictures were taken, and memories were made. They would talk about their times and their pace and new running clothes and where they were going to travel for races and I wanted to be apart of the journey. So now, 7 years later, I have ran numerous races and more half marathons than I can count. It was time to lace up and train for a full. I have always used the Hal Higdon training schedule to train for all of my races. He has numerous training schedules based on mileage and experience level.

This week I struggled keeping up with my mileage. I began to question my intentions. I wasn't sure anymore who I was running for and why I felt the need to now run a full marathon. Who was I trying to impress? It's the internal struggle of, "why isn't running 5 miles good enough?". If I go out and plan to run 5 miles, but I start running, not feeling it at all, and do 3 miles instead, why isn't that enough? I'm extremely hard on myself, I begin to doubt my reasons and put myself down. In the runners world, or any world that we are living in, that will kill you. It will begin to tear you down mentally and emotionally. No matter how much I run, it is good enough. It is good enough! Get back up, brush the dirt off of the scraped knees, and keep going. So you miss a mile mark, wake up the next day and keep going. You can't let what was missed out on the day before, keep you from experiencing what tomorrow has to offer. Follow through. Set your mind to what you want to accomplish, create a plan, don't let the setbacks hold you back from getting to the finish line, and keep going. You might not be able to start where you left off, but none the less, the experience will be just as enjoyable and you will definitely learn from the process. So, I am going to keep going. I might have not ran 5 miles this week, but I still ran. I got out there and I trained with all of my heart. Life will be an emotional roller coaster ride, there will be doubt and pain and struggle and a little bit of constructive criticism, but then the excitement comes, you hear the clicking as you slowly proceed uphill and get butterflies thinking about the unknown. I wont let skipping 5 miles keep me from enjoying the accomplishment of running 9. Train hard every damn day and whatever you do, give it your all.

I had to buy silver glitter Toms to have as much spirit

as I could at work (below). Our colors are red, blue, and white/silver.

I bought these Toms off of Poshmark for $10, originally $60.