Progress: A Beautiful Thing

I don’t know about you guys, but I’m soooo stoked the weekend is finally here! I got to sleep in a little this morning, do some yoga, and grab some lunch with old friends. Of course, I snuck in some beach time too 🙂 beautiful, right?

The week was pretty hectic blog and work-wise, so I didn’t get to work out nearly as much as I would’ve liked. However, I did make the best of it, and something magical happened: since my plans got thrown off, I finally woke up and saw how much I’ve progressed. It’s crazy how you can get stuck thinking about where you want to be instead of how far you’ve come. 

A few days ago I had my ‘fast run’ day; I was slammed at work and scrambled to get out in time to fit it in before dark. Since I was a little short on time, I decided to run a mile as fast as I could and then go into my intervals (usually, I do a timed tempo run and don’t worry about distance.) I was shocked by how quickly I hit the one mile mark – I was far from winded and wasn’t even sweating. On a hot, humid, Hawaii day. I thought, I might’ve even come in under eight minutes!

Not only did I come in under eight minutes, I came in at 7:20. I haven’t ran a mile that fast since my first year of college! When running a 7-minute file was part of our fitness tests for the soccer team. Err, what?!

I’ve been running for a while now, but I’m happiest doing slow, long-distance stints as opposed to quick, fast ones. Since I’m doing my Spartan Race, though, I’ve been diligently knocking out my fast-paced runs & cardio each week. I never thought I’d be able to run a fast mile! And I’m still very, very far from where I want to be. My training is still in its infancy – I can finally see myself running longer and longer distances much faster, something I’ve always wanted but never thought could happen.

Even better, I’m not even sore after my runs! I’ve been doing more stretching, icing, and yoga, and paying attention to my post-run meals. I feel like I’m finally getting this stuff all figured out! And I’m going to spend this whole weekend relaxing and enjoying my progress.

Cheers to next week!

Nikki