My feet hurt and for the first time in months I got another blister. I’m telling you guys, it sucks so bad but I can’t complain with what made that blister. I have now ran ten miles. Ten miles is so strange and honestly I was really working this time. I felt it in my heart and legs but my lungs felt fine. For a while I was running and able to do little dances while running. Mostly by using my hands to exaggerate certain parts of the songs I was listening to. It was quite dramatic but also a nice way to spend my time. Trying to make it more fun. 

Then a wonderful thing happened. It rained. Yes It rained while I was running and I think it made the run much easier. I was able to keep up my nine minute pace most of the way and I felt pretty good through most of it. When I got to around seven miles, I began to feel a little drained. I have been working non-stop since I have gotten back from Canada and even though its good it also is a lot of time and energy to give out. I did a eight hour shift before I did the ten miles but, that was really my only option. 

Sometimes you gotta do things at crazy times of the day. 

Once the ten miles were finally finished I felt like my body had become a stone block. I walked it out a bit and by the time I got to the end of my driveway to do the loop, I was feeling the pain on my feet. The adrenaline was gone and exhausted but also pride was there. There’s just something in being able to do a run like that. I can tell you guys I have come such a long way and I hope I do good on this half marathon. We are so close.

Stay tuned with my updates as we get closer and closer to the race. After the race is done I will report how it went. Until then fellow runners and followers

So as some of you may or may not know I have twenty two one days left until my Half Marathon race. It feels like this past six months has flown by. Its nuts. When I started I wasn’t sure if I was going to make it to the thirteen miles, I mean I could barely do five and I was always doing three miles on a regular basis. For me it seemed like maybe I took on more than I could chew and yet I persisted. I changed how many miles I was running on a every other day basis and I steadily started going up. I went from three to four, to then five and from there I lingered a little. I wasn’t sure if I could do more than five. I had a hard time keeping pace and I honestly felt like maybe it was too long for me. I had a hard time concentrating and I had a hard time pushing myself to move onward. 

Then my neighbor stepped in and for a while she became my push to go run in the mornings. We had a nice time and sure it was super early in the morning but it was so rewarding to have someone to push and to encourage. It lit something in me and from there I just took off. I went from five to six miles and six was a whole new territory for me. I wasn’t sure how I would respond to doing six miles but I managed to finish and I was so excited. When I got in the shower I was yelling "Fu** Yes! I did it!" It just didn’t seem possible and after it had all settled and I was washing away the sweat from how hard I worked, it became a reality that it was happening. 

After I accomplished six I started setting myself up to go further. ON a regular basis I would run four miles and on the weekend I would do one long run. I maneuvered to times that seemed a little late for most people but I knew that if I didn’t do it on the day that I had planned that I would progress at all. So I kept going. Quickly it went from six miles to nine miles and I remember how I felt when I cross my home made finish line after my watch went off saying nine miles. I felt like I could do the thirteen. I felt so good and my body felt like it was on the best high it had ever been on. I wasn’t shaking, I wasn’t dieing to catch my breath, but I was overjoyed with the realization that I didn’t stop and I made it all the way. 

I know I can do thirteen now, I just have to push myself to do the race and finish. I hope you guys will continue to support me and I hope that the race turns out to be amazing. I need to do this race not only for myself but as a start to a new chapter in my life. 

Do you guys have any goals you’re trying to accomplish? 

So the past three weeks has been a roller-coaster ride when it comes to my half marathon Training. At this point and time I have reached the nine mile marker and I can happily say that I can run the nine miles. It was hard to concentrate after a while but I managed to find ways to keep myself going. While I was running I was looking at the houses in the neighborhoods I was running in. I was seeing who had boarded up and who hadn’t. Not too surprisingly there were very few houses who had boarded up. There was even one that had Irma spray-painted on the front door. Kind of dramatic but that’s ok. Really it seemed to make the run more interesting and made me think of the type of people who lived there. 

As I was running I also noticed that there were a lot of For Sale signs up all of the sudden. It made me wonder if people were just putting them up because they knew their house wouldn’t exist anymore when the hurricane passed or if it was one of those "were tired of Florida" things and they just hadn’t found anybody to buy the house yet. In any case there were quite a bit of people who had the for sale signs up. So of course I took all of this in while I was running my nine mile trek. There were even people that kept coming out on the streets and I had to move to avoid hitting them. I was on a path and I was going to finish one way or the other. 

AS I kept going on my nine mile trek I think I forgot about how much further I had. I just kept thinking about the areas I was running in as foreign lands. Lands that I conquered as I finished up a certain area. I think in the end that was what kept me going. Just thinking about sections of the run as me conquering lands. It kept my mind busy and I would find myself smiling at random times. I think it was the idea that I was beating my imaginary enemies that kept me going through it all and made the run that much better. 

That with the winds that were cooling me down while I ran I felt pretty confident in doing the nine miles and once I was done I realized how I felt about this training and how i was glad that I switched my program to the way it is now. If I hadn’t I probably would still be at five miles. Now five miles looks like an easy task compared to the nine. The real challenge will be knowing if I can run nine miles while were in Canada. 

It really is awesome to progress. 

oh my godddddd! You will never guess what I did the other day! I cant believe that it happened and I can tell you that I am probably still feeling it by the time you read this post. What did I do? I just ran a new record distance for myself. See I have been training for a half marathon in October and its getting closer and closer. At first I wasn’t sure if I was going to be able to do the race just because I didn’t believe that I could do the full 13.1 miles. If anything I thought that I would never progress past five. I know how hard it is for me to do five miles and it always felt like there was a block there. I would always feel like I was getting sick or my side would cramp up. It seemed like the impossible was in front of me. 

Yet I kept persisting and eventually experienced six miles. Now I did a post about what six miles felt like. With that experience you can imagine how I felt doing seven miles. Really I was dreading it and when my neighbor got sick and told me that she wasn’t going to go do the run with me, well....I started to doubt if I would do it at all. I even got to a point where I told myself that I would get up super early and go do it before anyone was awake. Yet something in me screamed to just get it over with. For a few hours I ignored it and tried my best to just relax and get ready for an early bed time. Yet something was nagging me. 

I got up, went to the bathroom and before I could think anything of it I started putting on my shoes and got dressed up for the run. Yet the motivation wasn’t present yet. So with my headphones on and the music turned up I went outside. The humidity was light and there was a breeze in the area. Without much thought or second guessing I went ahead and started on the trek. It wasn’t long before I started to realize that I was getting into it. The smiles kept growing and before I knew it I was on the trek home and flying. My legs felt like feathers and I was letting everything go. I wasn’t sure when the runners high set in but I am positive that I felt it twice while I was out there. I sure wasn’t expecting it after having pizza for dinner and I felt a little pain in my stomach from the flaming hot cheetohs but, *******n did I do it. 

I don’t know if anyone else on here is a runner but if you are then I hope you understand how accomplished I feel. It’s a step in the right direction and I am starting to feel more confidence in myself. 

Are you a runner?

I ran six miles yesterday. Let me tell you a little something about running that far and in Florida heat. It is SO brutal that its not even funny. Every breath you take is like hot coals going down your throat. Your skin is sweaty but there’s no breeze to cool that sweat. Your clothes are clammy and soaking wet. Your legs feel like cement blocks and oh my god is it difficult to concentrate. I can do a four miler pretty decently. Not too many blisters, nice burn but not too noticeable and lastly, I can breathe. When it gets humid in Florida your breath is like an anchor that just keeps going down. Slowly drowning itself to the bottom of the ocean. 

Once I got over the idea of me dieing I took a good look at my feet. Now recently I have been having trouble with the shoes giving me blisters. Some pretty serious ones too. I was concerned about how bad they were so I made sure to bandage them up for padding at one point. Walking became a terrible idea and I honestly didn’t know how to handle tile and my wood floors. The coolness always shocks me. This time though it seems that my feet went through a turn for the worse. 

During the six miles I noticed that I was slower for a while and I began to wonder if it was because of my feet. They didn’t hurt when I was running but at some points I did run kind of funny due to something giving me a little stab in the foot. I don’t know if it was a piece of wood that got stuck or hit my feet just right but I can tell you that looking at the bottom of my foot and having to make a decision on what to do was awful. I love these shoes but this is crazy. I wasn’t expecting my feet to be this bad and its just from these new shoes. 

I will admit that I am a little worried about how my feet will look when I am done with the half marathon. I assume that my feet will just entirely peel and be a mess. Im not looking forward to that but I am looking forward to being able to drink after I get done with the race. That way I don’t care about my feet for a couple hours. 

Six miles is a huge step in the right direction. Here we come Wicked Triple!