This week Amber wants us to post about what inspires us. There are really several things that inspire me. Every morning on my way to work there is someone out there at 5:30 running or walking and I am completely in awe of these people. I wish I could make myself get up that early and just hop out of bed and go. It does make me more excited to get out later in the day though!
The monkeys also inspire me. I know that having 3 little boys takes A LOT of energy and I can't imagine sitting back and just watching. I have had the pleasure of running in kid races with them twice and I really can't wait till we can do a 5K together and they smoke me!
I have a necklace that I got for finishing my first (and only to date) half marathon. I actually put this on this morning because it inspires me. It is a small silver stick figure of a woman running with the race date and name on it. I love it and whenever I wear it, I am inspired to get back out there and keep logging miles.
This past week was a pretty good one for me. I have been running 3 mile stretches and am increasing my speed slowly. There were two times that I really did not want to be on that treadmill and I simply told myself to get on and go just 1 mile, then 2 miles, then just 5 more minutes and I ended up doing 3 miles each time. I went for my first road run since the baby on Saturday morning. It was really tough though. My running buddy came along and she pushed littlest monkey in his jogger while I pushed the two older monkeys in the double jogger. I kept getting frustrated because of how fast my heartrate was going up and how winded I kept getting. Later on I figured out I was being very hard on myself and should have been happy to run at all considering how much I was actually pushing. Each monkey is about 40 pounds, and the stroller is at least 15. So all in all I was pushing about 95 pounds!! I feel lucky to have not passed out from that one! It will get better, we plan on keeping it up and I feel like it will actually count as a strength training session for me. It was so nice to get out and run with someone too. We have some great conversations, did I mention my running buddy is a psychologist!?!
