What can hold ME down?

You will find a lot of quotes from the bible in my blog, but this is one that I found on my friend's facebook status today, and really liked.

Setbacks, we face them every day. Some cause us to stumble, others bring us to our knees. And along with pain and heartache, each setback brings the opportunity to rise up. To be stronger and better and braver than before.

At the end of January I got in a car accident. Totalled my car completely, and went almost 2 months with pain in my back and neck, which subsequently lead to pain in my arms and head too. I had to take two months off of training for the Cherry Blossom 10 Miler, which I had registered for back in November. When I did the 10K in December, I figured that a 10 Miler would be a challenge, but a good goal to train for. I made that decision before the car accident.

Over the last few weeks I have struggled with the challenge of this race. Do I run? Do I switch from the 10 miler to the 5K? Maybe it is all about my pride, but I figured that if I was gonna push myself it was gonna be to do a 10 miler, not a 5K. Well, I am still signed up for the 10 miler, and you know what? 4 miles is tough for me to run right now I have not been training for long enough again, and have not had the time to build up my running, so I have been pushing myself in distance to try to account for what I have lost in constancy.

But here goes. It is now Wednesday night, and the 10 miler is on Sunday. My only goal is to not get picked up by the bus at the end of the race, I want to finish it. My original goal was just to run it, but I now know that may not be possible. I have been praying a lot on it, and really just believing that I can not look like a fool with this whole race. I just hope I can do it and I am trying not to doubt.

But it does really give me more motivation. It's funny how adversity can help with that. It really helps you see that if you can climb this rock and that hill, that you really can do anything when you put your mind to it. It may be tough, and you may not always see it working out, but it does. That's why I love the quote up top there. The car accident along with the additional things going on in my life recently have taken me to all those points. I stumbled. I found myself on my knees with nothing left to offer. And for every reason I've had to give up, I had just that many more to push myself over it. To become stronger, and better, and braver than ever before.

Wish me luck! I'll post updates to the run next week!