Day 4

Now I know that the title of my blog is somewhat contradicting to what I am working for, but if there is one thing that I am definitely NOT it is a sprinter.  I have known this forever, I remember in 8th grade track wondering how in the WORLD to people sprint that fast in 100 meters? Or that fast at all? My legs just don't go like that (curse you legs.) Yes I can run but no I do not do well with running super fast which is why I decided to pair one of my least favorite things with one of my most favorite things: sprint mile training on Zumba day. So my Thursdays will consist of getting the evil bad thing over and done with before I go teach a dance party for an hour and call it a night.

I got to the Campus Rec Center about 30 minutes before I teach which gave me enough time to warm up, bust out a mile, recover, clock in and head to Zumba. During my elliptical warm up I decided to aim for an 8 minute mile, which would be running at 7.5 mph.  For a lot of people that is no trouble but I usually average a 10 minute mile, so for me that is busting butt.  I was excited to get going because I do not teach Zumba till 9pm, which means I have waited around all day for a workout and I can get antsy towards the end of the day if I still haven't done anything.  After my warm up I jumped on a treadmill, set it to 7.5 and got going. By .20 of my mile I was ready to run slower.  By .50 I was pouring sweat and breathing heavy.  By .75 I was afraid of potentially vomiting. By .80 I stopped running for 10 seconds for a slight recover. After 10 seconds I got back on and was so mad that I stopped I bumped my speed to 8mph and finished my mile in 8 minutes! It was awful. And great. And horrible. And awesome, all at the same time. Then I got to teach Zumba for an hour and life was good!

At the Rec this week we have been having an event called Celebrate Every(body) week, which has been really cool. In a nutshell, it basically is promoting positive body image to college kids. I do not struggle as much with my body image today as I used to. I remember freshman year of college I was having a lot of mental issues with how I looked and what others thought of me. The beginning of my freshman year I also had no active routine and didn't know that I actually had to still keep eating vegetables even though mom was not there (sorry mom, I know better now.) To me it's crazy to think about, and others probably have not noticed, but I actually now weigh 20 pounds less  than I did at Christmas my first year of college. (And I am a lot stronger, woohoo!) It took me a long time to really understand that the scale does not define me, I define me.  Once I started to work out for fun and compete against me and not the numbers, it just got better and better. One other aspect that has helped tremendously with my own body image is (sorry, I am going to get sappy for a second) my awesome boyfriend who never fails to tell me how beautiful I am. It's truly great being surrounded by people who lift you up rather than tear you down.

Tomorrow is rest day. Hopefully I can stick to that…or at least just do yoga.