t h e m a y f i l e s is foremost a family blog, chronicling everyday life. Life including natural, healthy eating (with recipes thrown in at random), home educating (with ideas popping up sporadically), an attempt to homestead on .2 acres (with very meager yields), raising 3 of 4 children with a rare genetic disorder, and lots of highly personal family triumphs and failures. You may also find an eclectic array of musings on politics, exercise, sewing, emergency preparedness, backyard chickens, and religion. This blog isn't a campaign to glorify anyone or anything. Just simply a record.

7.21.2008

Just Keep Running

The past few weeks I started running with my friend Marie. She is this lightning fast maniac runner. If you want to improve at something...find someone who is a whole lot better and spend as much time as possible with them! Marie was a college runner and has coached High School for lots of years. She just quit coaching a couple months ago. So she has been a lonely runner. I finally got up the guts to give it a go with her, and boy does she work me hard. I am a serious amateur in comparison. She ran a 3:05 marathon. That is 7:03 min/mile averages (and she hit the wall the last 4 miles of that race). 3:05 is just incomprehensible to me. Running with Marie is forcing me to step up my game.

Today she took me on hills. Not little hills, but steep, unrelenting hills. Already tonight I am paying for it. My quads are going to kill me tomorrow and my knee is screaming in protest, after icing it 2x today even. But if I have learned anything about running, it is that I just better keep running. My body always fights me when I go to the next level. My knees hurt, my joints ache, my muscles are sore... However, if I just keep running, within a couple weeks, that same hill, or increased distance doesn't bother me anymore.

Anyone can be a runner. I have a hard time believing someone can't run because their knees hurt. Mine are so painful. When I started running after pregnancy, I wasn't sure if I could ever do it again. Two miles felt so hard, and I had to limp on my knee. I didn't stop, just iced, and over a couple weeks, the knees got stronger and the distances and times got longer and faster. Just keep running. With anything...it may hurt, be uncomfortable...but just keep runnning.

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