Sunday, April 5, 2015

Untold Stories of Dallas (Part 1)

Oh my goodness…I can’t believe It has been 2 weeks since the Rock ‘N Roll half marathon. I’ve been working on putting together my blog post(s) since I’ve been home…and as you may have guessed things have been a little busy here! So I apologize it has taken a while to get these posted, however, I have a few posts to share so you’ll be able to catch up over the next few days! I won’t bombard you all at once (because I actually want you to come back and not get scared off by the enormity of all I have to say)! So without further to do I will share my writings from the day I arrived in Dallas…Thursday, March 19, 2015:

Thursday after writing my post I went for a 5k run while David and Elise were at work and everyone else was on their way into town. I ran my first mile in just under 10 minutes and then I began to panic and my second mile I ran in just under 12 minutes. Then I tried to calm myself down and pick up the pace on the third mile. I saw a woman running in front of me and I thought how natural and fast she looked running and desperately wished I could look like that. I heard the lie in my head saying, “well…too bad…because you suck…you’ll never run well…you’re slow…and you’re never going to run the 30 minute 5k that you want to do Saturday…you’re going to mess it up and panic and freak-out and fail!” and right in the middle of those thoughts running through my mind I heard a small voice saying, “stop thinking of yourself as a failure…you’re continually sabotaging yourself and thinking of yourself as a failure. You’re strong, you’re capable, and you can run well, and you can get to 170…now push yourself!” and so I ran…and I ran hard. When my watch beeped for 3 miles I looked down at my watch and I was running around a 9 min/mile pace! My average pace ended up being 32:45:5 so a 10:34 pace:



I don’t particularly know what flip was switched…but it was definitely flipped! It’s like all the lies I had believed were finally laid out in front of me and were no longer sugar coated (much to my sugar loving dismay). I saw them for what they were: LIES. In a lot of ways I live my life anticipating my failure. Waiting for the fall…waiting for the gain…waiting for the disappointment…waiting for the let down. Well it’s life and those things will come inevitably but they’d come a lot less frequently if I didn’t sabotage myself along the way. So in that moment I chose to believe what was true…that I am capable of running and running well, that I am capable of losing weight, that I am capable of succeeding, and that I have what it takes to run the 5k in 30 minutes or less. Whenever those nagging and negative thoughts or doubts that I wouldn’t be able to run my 5k in under 30 minutes came up I would just visualize myself succeeding and say, “Yes you can…and yes you will!”

It’s amazing the difference a change in your mindset can make in your daily life. When you chose to listen to what is true and stop believing the lies that you tell yourself or that other people yell at you or that you read on Internet. We’re constantly attacked with the lie that we’re not good enough, that we have to make ourselves better to be worth something, that we have to fit into an image to be able to chase our dreams, or that we have to accomplish so much to be worthy of being loved or accepted.  

Something that has always amazed me is how people have believed in me this entire journey. Even though I’ve had success there are so many days where I’ve wanted to quit and felt that I couldn’t make one more step in the right direction. I’ve felt that eventually I’m just going to binge myself back up to 320+ and this all would have been for naught. In those moments and on those days there would always be someone who would come along me as I was feeling the desire to toss in the towel and say, “You’re doing amazing! You’re so close to your goal! Look how far you’ve come! You’ve encouraged me! You’ve motivated me! You’ve given me hope to fight my own battles. You’re going to get there! You’re going to succeed” and others belief in me has spurred me on.


It’s always easy to see potential in someone else and see that they’re capable of finishing something…but we are our own worst enemy and we can be so self-destroying sometimes! We doubt our abilities…give up early…and sell ourselves short of our full potential. I don’t want to do that. I want to stop eating like I’m going to binge, I want to stop running like I’m going to fall, and I want to stop living like I’m going to fail. So what am I going to do tomorrow? Ha! I’m gonna run a sub 30 5K!

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