the mental block

Saturday morning I woke up to an absolutely gorgeous fall day. If you typed "perfect Sept day" into Google, you'd have seen a picture of Saturday. It was supposed to be my final day of Insanity Recovery Week - which let's not fool ourselves, was not as much recovery as I'd have liked.

I could not bring myself to waste the day inside so I swapped the dvd workout for my first official Autumn run. Since it had been 2wks since I'd run at all (and 2mos since I'd run prior to that) I decided on my 4.5mi loop. But as I made my way over to the lake, I realized just how good it felt to be out running. I had missed it! As I got to the pretty side, I decided I might as well shoot for 5mi. By the time I got to the turn to make it 5mi even, I realized I still felt really good so why not shoot for 6, or heck!, even 6.6?! Then I figured, I might as well make one more turn, go up one more hill. I made it nearly 3mi further than I'd originally planned. Total mileage: 7.2mi. I guess I'm ready for the 10K I'll be doing on Oct 14th!

There's one thing that I think prevents us from achieving things we have the physical ability to do: the mental block. We tell ourselves there is no way we could do A, B, or especially C. I told myself that very thing on Saturday morning - before I did what I had to believe that I could.

One thing I have come to know in the past few years: YES, YOU CAN. You can run a 5K, you can do a Tough Mudder, you can get through 2 months of Insanity. So much of having the ability to do something is believing that you can. It takes work, it won't happen overnight. Just remember, "every morning is another chance to change your life."

And if you don't take my word for it, just ask: Meghan, Erika, Ben, Krista, Dawn, Jocelyn, Heidi, Andrew, Sarah, Josh, Karen, Nick, Nate, Karyn, Bonnie, Matt, Sarah, Valerie, Robert, ...need I go on?