better late than never...long post

Please forgive the formatting of this post. I am having issues with blogger tonight and it keeps messing up my format of my post. And I have redone it like, 5 times, and I am through messing with it haha. So, one big paragraph, here we go: I wrote this on Saturday and kept forgetting to post it: I wanted to write a little more about my run yesterday. Some of you may be thinking “Really Colleen? It was a three mile run…big woop”. However, for me, this was a really big accomplishment. So often when I run alone, I give up so easy. At the first feeling of tired legs, I stop and walk. I don’t push through, and as a result, I probably am not making my legs any stronger. I went out yesterday with the mindset that I would not walk, because I know that I don’t need to. There were two things I kept going back over in my mind. A few days ago, RunnerNic wrote about running form. I have HORRIBLE form. I am that person whose feet are slamming into the ground and whose breathing is ragged and uneven. Each time my legs started to feel a little tired, I focused on two things she wrote about. First was picking up my knees, and second was making my arms swing straight back and forth, not across my body. Focusing so intently on these two things made me forget quickly how tired my legs were feeling. The other thing I kept thinking about was how Erika always tells me that running is a mental sport. Yes, there is the physical aspect of it, but I am at the point where my body can keep going, and it is my mind that has held me back. This run, my mind was with me all the way. I just kept telling myself that I have done this before, I can do it again. Every time I ran that distance before without stopping (which is actually only once haha) Erika was a big part of why I kept running and didn’t walk. She kept me going. But I just kept thinking to myself “why are you even considering stopping colleen? You have done this before, you know your body can continue on”. Besides those two things, as I was nearing the end of my run, a great Rise Against song came on. I had not heard it before (I love you Pandora) but everything in it made me run faster and harder as I approached home. I wish I knew the name of the song, but as I was running, I really didn’t want to stop and try and look at my phone to figure out what the name of the song was. Hopefully I will hear it again sometime! This summer I will do the majority of my training solo. And I have to be my own motivator and my own best friend out there! Today the only body parts that are a little sore are my hips, and that was all that was a little sore during the run yesterday. But they really are just a little tight, they aren’t in pain or anything. I suppose that’s all for now. O wait, one more thing that is a little funny. I actually got chased by a little Yorkie dog on part of my run yesterday. And that was a surprising motivator. I am not scared of dogs, but when one was chasing me, I def kicked it up a notch haha.