Hey fearless readers! Hope you’re have a wonderful Friday.

On Wednesday, I posted about the trials and tribulations that I’ve been going through in training for a marathon that is supposed to happen in December. Working out everyday for 6 months straight. On five days of the week, I was doing two-a-days….weights in the morning and running in the evening.

I’d recently started experiencing pain in damn near every part of my body. From my shoulders to my butt and even my big toe. I’m not exaggerating!

Since I was hurting everywhere; I decided to take it easy by doing weights every other morning and taking a brisk walk in the evenings instead of running. But that didn’t help at all. I was still hurting!

Here’s a look at Nike reminding me how terrible my numbers were:

As you can see, I hit the trails for 3 miles. My average time per mile was 18 minutes and 45 seconds. Which is absolutely horrible when I compared it to my previous numbers when I was running a 10 minute mile. Seeing that it took me basically double the amount of time than before all of the body pain was a hard pill to swallow. But I had no choice but to accept it.

After this run, I got on the floor to do pushups before bed and it felt like my arm was going to fall off. It was suddenly extremely sore and hurt if I tried to raise my hand.

I woke up the next day (still hurting) and said,

Bitch, you need a break!

and that’s what I did. I set rules for myself that day: No weights, no cardio, no pushups…nothing. I just felt tired and beat up.

After a full day of rest, I took the next morning off and did no weights too. When our usual run time came, my husband asked if I felt like going out. I’ll go but I’ll take it easy. I thought.

I got out there and don’t know what happened. I ran faster, longer, and felt overall amazing! Check out my numbers after the break time…

When I checked out my stats, I was really impressed! It was not my personal best but it was a drastic improvement from just having one and a half days rest.

On the cool down, I started to think about what changed and why. Here are some things that I learned.

1. Give yourself grace. Don’t be too hard on yourself. Like I previously mentioned, I’d been working out for 6 months straight. I haven’t met my goals so far so I thought ramping up my exercises would get me there faster. It doesn’t work that way. Just keep showing up. The results will come.
2. Listen to your body. If you’re tired. Go sit down somewhere! You’re human. You need rest. Working with injuries will only make it worse not better.
3. Learn to laugh at yourself. Stressing and exercising don’t go together. Exercising actually helps to alleviate stress. Laughing at the fact that your 40 year body needs rest, when you’re 20 year old body different is pretty funny if you think about it.

I’m excited to be feeling more like myself again and hope to see my running times greatly improve. Either way I’ll just keep showing up (except when my body tells me not to) and enjoying the journey! After all, the marathon awaits.

Whats something you’ve learned about yourself during a fitness journey? Let’s talk in the comments.

Stay Fearless 💋