Day 12: Motivation

I have been wanting to set some pretty big goals for a while. Work out goals, life goals, personal goals.... I find myself getting into a pattern of getting kind of stuck in life. Feeling like I give a whole lot but that I have very little purpose other than taking care of my child. And while that purpose is amazing, I am at a point where I just need something more. I put my schooling on hold when I had my oldest child so I obviously haven't finished school yet and I haven't started a career. So last may when I had lots of amazing friends running the Illinois marathon, I thought maybe that should be my shorter term goal. Well not the marathon... I have never ran a day in my life outside of suicides and a mile here and there when I played basketball. But the half marathon seemed doable for me. So I started talking about it like I was going to do it. And I got some friends to join me. So right now I have a wonderful friend from TN coming to run with me, a friend from central IL, possibly my best friend (still working on her though) and a girl who went to high school with me all ready to come run on April 30th with me. And it is motivating the heck out of me! I am so excited to be training for such a big personal goal for myself. It feels awesome to have people training with me and doing something they have never done (with rare exception) with me. It is encouraging and it feels like I have something to be excited about outside of just being a mom and a wife. It is helping with my anxiety as I train day after day (wee endorphins) and it is just generally giving me something exciting to look forward to in my life. Something that feels like a big accomplishment.

So today I am thankful for friends coming along side me and providing me with encouragement and motivation. I am thankful for the accountability that comes along with committing to do something with other people. I am thankful for a challenge (yea, I am not a runner... at all) for my body. I am an athlete and competitor by nature... but I have never much done anything that is all about self and self-improvement. And now that I am fully embracing a journey to take care of myself, I am looking forward to a new sort of competition.

So here is an invitation: April 30, 2011 is the Illinois Marathon in Champaign IL. You can sign up for a 5k, 10k, half marathon or the full marathon. But I am inviting you to come join me and some other awesome women as we do something challenging and rewarding together. As we leave behind "mommy", "wife", "patient", "professional", etc for a while and focus on our bodies and stretching our limits to achieve better fitness, endurance, mental stamina, anxiety control or whatever else you want to accomplish... join us :) I am thinking we will be having some sort of celebration Saturday night too though I have not got the details ironed out yet. And I fully admit that I might be dragging my tired, broken self to any celebrations we have that evening :) Anyway, you really are invited... contact me if you are interested!