gainyourwings

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Posts by gainyourwings:
But first...
Keep moving. Even if it's slow. Even if it's cold. Even if it's short. Keep moving. #running #health #trailrunning #runkc #training #fitness
🛑🛑HARD TALK🛑🛑 It's not easy. It's just not easy. First time back on trails with intent since Flagstaff back in October. It's been hard. Mentally I felt destroyed over the past several weeks, including the blood pressure spike. Last week I did nothing. No running, no weights, no yoga...nothing. It was the first nothing week since at least June of 2018. Tonight it was a 40 minute hike in the snowy woods. Don't let anyone (including yourself) fool you; this stuff is hard. It's hard physically, mentally, and emotionally. There are peaks, there are valleys, the sun and happiness, and there's darkness and sorrow. We all have our excitement of lacing up, hydrating, eating, and telling tales of survival with our friends. We also have to accept that it is not always perfect, calm, or collected. I'm still learning a lot of this. This is why I run. #trailrunning #running #ruhn_co #bocogear #hshive #runkc #health #fitness #mentalhealth #ultramarathon
I haven't felt quite right since coming back from Flagstaff. My body just felt off. Constant pressure, heart palpitations, and severe lightheadedness. Knowing my own medical history, I did what probably was the best first step; started with the blood pressure. Since the summer, note photo, my BP has increased nearly 20-30 points. This is with medication, monitoring my diet, and playing by the rules. That's what work will do to you. Called my cardiologist, he doubled my dosage of medication, knocked me out of this weekend's race, and placed me on complete physical restriction (no running, lifting, etc.. ) for at least a week. I cannot stress enough; lesson learned, if you have a medical issue, keep monitoring it. Now, to work on ways to relax. #trailrunning #heart #health #highbloodpressure #HBP #running #fitness
This is what I needed. A huge thanks to the @irunwithgoatz community for letting me hang with them yesterday at the GOATz Trail Runs. Plus I had some time to stretch the legs and get some gravel hill repeats in. Reason #619 why I love the trail community: There is this unbelievable ability to have your spirits raised when you're around like minds. Onward. #trailrunning #running #goatz #nebraska #health #fitness #fit #bocogear #volunteering #runkc
The mind is a wicked web that we weave throughout our time here. It's been two weeks since I was in Arizona. My body feels alright, I'm not eating enough, but I'm not broken. My headspace is a mess. I'm not a person who will compete to win races, I openly (happily) accept that, but I'm also a person who doesn't find failure very often. In fact...if I'm being transparent...failure is the anti-thesis to my obsession with perfection. Perfection doesn't mean everything is in fact perfect, but it means the plan and execution of the plan worked. I'm not familiar with a plan not working. I'm still struggling. Acceptance of being in over my head was relatively easy. Accepting that something went wrong that I hadn't planned for had completely messed me up. I've avoided social media as a whole. Training has been absolutely awful this past week, running is something at the moment that I dread, and that is tough when your friends are doing incredible things around you. It brings about the idea of being a recluse, retreating...hiding. You want to support, cheer, and congratulate, but you also want to become invisible for a while. Today was a different day. I did not go to work because I took a mental health day, this being due to three panic attacks in four days (just being honest). I changed my music selection on Spotify. I cooked a full meal at home. I drank a lot of water, and as the photo notes, I ate a lot of food. I preach to my students that failure is something that we need in order to grow. I feel hypocritical saying that because I have such a hard time accepting failure. I was reading about @tatacalde7 from @forbes this evening. Besides her perspective and auto racing, it was her insight on knowing that we want to live in immediate gratification or immediate success that caught my attention. I am guilty of that, constantly, and in the love/hate reality of ultra running, you will never receive that immediate success. Writing is where I go when there is all the things trapped inside of me. It's vulnerability, but also therapy in its own right. Plus, a reminder that we're not alone, and everyone struggles. #ultramarathon #running #training #health
+4 days since Flagstaff Sky Peaks 50k attempt: I've learned things about my body since then. The lag time of exhaustion is about two days. Nearing 11:00 AM in the middle of class yesterday everything came crashing down. Energy, movement, all dropped rapidly. Hunger increased exponentially, my emotions were absolutely out of control, and all I wanted was sleep... ...so much so that I was late to @physedkc tonight (see: photo by @darci_daugherty). I tell myself that it "was only 18 miles" on Saturday. At the same time I'm just embarrassed by how long it is actually taking to get my feet back under me, and my head back into reality. #ultramarathon #running #training #trailrunning #rest #health #fit #fitness #runkc
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