Sit Down--Be Humble

Remain humble--even when the world is showering you with opportunities to be overbearing. Life is an arrogant teacher awaiting to tame her students with pop quizzes.  This random but not so random thought surfaced as I talked with one of my close long distance friends about the changes occurring in my life.  

In my head, I'm normal as fuck--I wake up, shower, juggle a ridiculous schedule and try to balance out my social life with a chaotic but sedentary freelance assignments.  To others, I'm supernatural and much more entertaining than what my brain tells me.  Realistically, I haven't been this inactive in five years and it's starting to piss me the fuck off.

Honestly, I haven't been as consistent with gym sessions and pavement stomping since the NYRR 60K.  Frequently, I run across these moments of irritation from feeling stagnant after the winter marathons are over.  Post-marathon blues is a bitch who contacts all of your exes and tells them vicious things like "did you have a mysterious bump near your penis while dating XX" or flattens your tires while you are hanging out with friends. I fell off the wagon after taking close friends and family members' suggestions of recovering and soon after, finding myself catching every disgusting bug under the sun.

What's a girl to do but throw away dollars that she doesn't have to races that she's already done before, right? Frankly, I'm po' as fuck and my race calendar is filling up.  I know the standards that'll hit the list:  I'll be signing up for the Brooklyn Half on January 31st and of course, I'm registered for the Chicago and NYC Marathons this year.  On the other hand, I've been on this crazy ass mantra since 2013 to dance with the devil called fear.  Most of my event calendar doesn't scare me--and that's a problem. 

A few weeks ago, I talked with a decent amount of enablers to help me invigorate my brain for some scary adventures.  Ultra running is still fairly new and the two times that I managed to take it on makes me question my neurosis.  To many, I should have been institutionalized years ago and to others, I'm divine.  Yeah, the latter mostly comes with my ability to tackle these things while fat and when people see the training regimen, my eccentric ways thrive from reassurance from the pubic that I lost my goddamn mind.  I'm in a constant battle with being scared that taking on something new will make me appear like an arrogant, attention seeking woman who want to shatter stereotypes for a newspaper clipping and wanting to do these things because I secretly enjoy inspiring people through my journey.  I know my intentions -I really take on these races selfishly for my own amusement- but I am flawed when it comes to my internal struggles.  I'm still scared of my own success; be patient with me as I'm a work in progress.

PET PEEVE:  Egotistical personalities drive me insane and makes me question what their reaction to shortcomings.

​These waves of surfacing on different media outlets since 2014 made me nervous to become what I fear--it's not who I aspire to be nor a fear that makes me want to touch it.  Instead, I want my success to come from tacking obstacles that'll keep me humble in the areas that I need to be bitch smacked in once in a while.  For instance, I have done so many 10K and half marathons that I sometimes tell myself that I can complete it without worries of catching a DNF.  And unless I'm sick, I find this theory to be true thanks to muscle memory.  THIS IS NOT A GOOD THING.  

So here's my solution:  2018, I will scare the living shit out of myself with races that I don't think my body nor mind can handle.  

Calm yo' tits:  I'm not that much of a masochist that I want to see myself squirm or fail.  I want to grow just a bit more and prevent boredom.  I don't really follow horoscope shit but I'm a Gemini.  If the stereotypes are right, we get bored fairly quickly and I thrive from that fear, even if we fail at it.  The adrenaline junkie in me is itching to do more trail races, see my triathlon training through, try a few more obstacle course races and add more ultras to the list.  

If anything scares me more than that agenda, it's the finances that will follow.  My beloved friend did the Javelina Jundred 100K and her vivid description of doing this makes me scream hell to the no; I think I'll sign up for that when I get my money right--goddamn race is roughly 230.00.  I am still looking into half and full races outside of the United States because I need to be taken out of my comfort zone.  I don't know what drives you but I think scary shit is just the thing to do it.  Trail races are not for everyone, let alone doing an ultra on the goddamn mountains or dirt road.  I'm looking forward to seeing my success, even if it means that I'll fail attempting.  In the meantime, I have to treat this bronchitis infection so I can jump back to training.  I let my fellow fat girl running talk me into the North Face Endurance Challenge 50K for the end of April.  In turn, I'm going to attempt a minor run with no mileage or time goal just to see if my lungs are willing to entertain my foolishness.  Don't give me that look--I'll be kind to my body; I promise.