I'm an Inspiration

I wrote this morning's post a few days ago - I do that sometimes, it's like I'm actually planning ahead, very strange -- but then, last night, the universe gave me a sweet karmic reminder that everything I wrote was true.  I'll tell you about it, since you asked.  :-)

A little background: yesterday was a looong day.  I got up extra early and put on a suit, which I get to avoid most days.  I went to work to join a colleague on a trip 3 hours away.  The trip went really well - I got a sparkly shiny award! - and we even stopped at Ikea, palace of shiny prettiness, on the way home.  We did get stuck in some stinky traffic, and by the time I got home, it was after 6.  I fed the dogs and paid the bills.  That took me to 7.  I realized I was really hungry, so I opened the fridge, but found that my go-to snack, Fage yogurt, was expired.  Hrm.  I grabbed the turkey pepperoni and had 8 slices - how odd is that?  But they held me over as I opened up Angry Trainer Fitness and grabbed a workout.  By the time I got to the gym, it was 7:45.  I ran into a friend, we chatted.  8:00 before I get on the track . . .  I just wasn't feeling it.

But you know, I knew I needed to be there.  I knew I'd feel great afterwards.  And so I pretended I was into it, and I began jogging around the track. The routine is go 1/4 mile, then do 30 seconds of some exercise, and repeat.  I only did it 8 times, for a run of about 2 miles, but between the running and the intervals, I was there about an hour.  Sometimes instead of doing an exercise for 30 seconds, I'd do 30 reps, like with my beloved squats.  Whatever, that's not my point.  My point is, my ass was dragging, but I kept going.  Sometimes I felt like walking 1 lap and then jogging 3 laps, so I did.  I definitely started faster and then slowed down.  I did not feel like a rockstar, I felt like little old me, slogging through.  I finished my last quarter mile and grabbed my water bottle, heading back towards the kettle bells for a final set of side lunges (ooooh they hurt so good - lunges of all kinds are really hard for me), and this STRANGER comes up to me.

STRANGER DANGER!

Ahem.  She didn't look familiar to me, meaning she isn't one of the regulars I'm used to seeing at the Y all the time, but she and her young son had been walking laps for about 35 minutes.  I had lapped her a couple of times, which was fun for me, even I was jogging and she was walking.  :-)  I take my wins where I can get them, you know?  Anyway, she came up to me, and smiled, and said, "I just want to know, how do you do it?  How do you keep going?  You're just out there running and no one is making you."

Y'all, I smiled sooooo big.  I had a blast chatting with her for a few minutes.  I told her there is no secret, you just do it, and then when you're doing it, you ask yourself, can I do a little more of this?  And if the answer is anything other than, No, doing more of this will kill you, then I try to push a little harder.  I told her that no time is the perfect time to workout - the right time is the time you get there.  And I told her that what keeps me going is a combination of seeing results, feeling better, and really truly enjoying it.  I told her that I've lost 50 pounds in 10 months, run my first 5K, and a few other things.  I told her I believed she could do it, too.

And she told me I was an inspiration to her.  She'd been watching me, and she couldn't believe I just kept going.  Ha!

I'm going to live on that comment for days.

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