Don’t doubt it, MASTER IT

Have you ever doubted that you will achieve your dreams? Or have you been afraid to fail? It’s OK we’ve all been there. The way to erase those thoughts is to believe. You gotta believe in yourself and know that you will reach your goals.

Now that I’ve done the New York City Marathon,(read all about it here) that is one item off my bucket list. It was actually the TOP #1 must do on my list and I have just completed it. Now that I finished, here’s the big question….what now? Now that I have done my dream race, there leaves the question on what I plan to do next.

My answer…I am going to MASTER IT. I am not done with New York. It still is and will always be my dream race. It holds a special in my heart. It was an amazing time. My dream did come true, but I am not done. Even though it did not go well, my plan is get that target time I was hoping for. It was a low blow, no pun intended, that I would have such trouble breathing and struggling so much when I trained my butt off.

But you know what? I never doubted myself, or was afraid to fail. I was giving it every ounce of strength I had, and I was going to cross that finish line no matter how long it took. When I had woken up that morning it was dark O thirty, it was 4 a.m. As I approached the finish line, it was also dark O thirty. It was a little odd, being that I’ve never ran into the night, but I also did start close to noon. Now I have a new goal, I will go back and get that sub 5 hours I was chasing. I trained so hard and mastered the 10 minutes pace per mile. That was the pace I had in mind and kept it going strong until my rotated ribs had a different plan for me.

My next move is to try to make it back to New York and do it all over again. While I’ve yet to find out what happened, or how it happened, I am still going for it. I know I will do it and will be ready for anything. I had never had that rib pain on my left, so I hadn’t taped it. My right side was all taped up and I had minimal discomfort. But my left side was causing a pain that was out of this world. I don’t know how I made it, but I’ll tell you one thing…giving up was NEVER on my mind.

I have learned to remove all barriers that keep me from reaching my goals. Anything that gets in my way is just a challenge I need to overcome. Sometimes they take what seems like forever, but that doesn’t discourage me to find ways around the barriers. I am a fighter and I will continue to do so. Scoliosis is a condition that will tear down your soul, body and mind, but it doesn’t break me, it gives me the strength to overcome it. I will MASTER IT.

-the Scoliosis runner