one word- HILLS.

I have to say that this was definitely the hardest week for me. I have been super busy and stressing over the little stuff lately that I guess this past week I lost my focus on training. I ran about twice but never as hard as I should have. As Saturday was quickly approaching, the word hills crossed my mind like a hundred times. And to make it worse, it was 9 miles of hills. Friday night came and all I could think was that I wasn't prepared to run 9 miles of hills and as Saturday morning came, I never wanted to sleep in so badly. But I forced myself out of bed, and boy am I glad I did. I look out the window and for the first Saturday in a couple weeks it wasn't raining, so that was good. I get dressed, throw on some cotton socks (bad idea... you'll find out why), put on my shoes and I'm out the door. After fundraising announcements (I GOT MY GREEN AND PURPLE JACKET FOR REACHING THE FUNDRAISING GOAL!!) and the mission moment, we listened to a quick lesson about nutrition and strength training. Then it was time for our quick warm up run and stretching. Since this week was all about the hills, of course our warm up run was uphill.... My legs had already started hurting as we made it to the 7 eleven parking lot where we did our stretches. We stretched for a few minutes and then it was off to our run. I was dreading it, but as soon as I started I threw that mindset out the window. Let me tell you, running with about 100 other people is quite inspiring. I paced myself and was doing quite well; it was then time for the turn around point and as I was coming back up the hill I felt this blister growing on the bottom of my foot (from wearing cotton socks) that started hurting quite badly, so what did I do? Yup, I stopped and walked. What was I thinking, right?? Here I am running for people that have gone through trials much bigger than a blister on the bottom of their foot and kept going, but I decided to stop...

Well if you read my earlier blog I mentioned someone named Julie who ran with me for a while last weekend. There she was again, telling me to keep going and telling me how she deals with blisters and you kind of have to just run through them. And then this other lady was running with us (I wish I could remember her name) and was talking about how she remembered me from the previous mission moment and that coming out to run in the rain was so worth it just to hear my story. How amazing, huh? At that time I completely forgot about my blister and ran until the end, and all of a sudden I wasn't tired or exhausted anymore. This team has already taught me some amazing things. When my sister was living with leukemia and having to go through painful treatments I swore to myself I would never complain about the small stuff. But there I was, wanting to stop after a blister... As soon as I refocused, and really remembered why I was here, why we are ALL here, I was able to run my heart out. Some things I learned from my sister and from the other people I've seen battle this disease is that you can't stop, for even a moment, when a blister gets in your way. You can't focus on the negative, and you just have to keep going, you have to keep fighting, you have to keep running. I am so thankful to be surrounded my such inspirational people and such a great team.