In these moments

Over the past several weeks I had not been seeing a whole lot of change in the way of my body healing or fitness gains from strength training.

One day sort of blurred into the next. I found myself driving to the gym in the dark around 6am wondering what and the heck am I doing?

I work very hard every day and still cannot run and still feel broken down physically.  I have begun to learn through my past racing/running experiences that in these moments if you resist the urge to quit typically this is where you experience breakthroughs.

Indeed I have begun to see real change over the last few days. I have adjusted my nutrition to now include Natures Way Alive daily vitamins. I normally do not take vitamins because of GI issues but Natures Way Vitamins are made from whole foods. Basically ground up veggies,fruits,herbs ect ect. Seems that my body is perfectly fine with this product which makes me very happy. I have also begun to take a tendon/ligament supplement from Vitamin shop. The verdict it out about this product being effective but considering how my IT band and achilles tendons have been figured it could not hurt. 

So what kind of changes have I begun to see over the last few days? Well first my achilles are getting better. WAY better. They were slowly healing over the last few weeks but this past week they have healed more than all of the other weeks combined. This happens to be the same week I started taking the vitamins. Are they related? Don't know. But I suspect there is a possibility. I have also begun to see real strength gains from my daily weight lifting. I knew I was getting bigger because none of my pants fit around my thighs anymore but more importantly my ability to lift weight has gone up. I ran on the stair climber last night at the gym after 45 hard minutes of climbing and for the first time felt I could really dig in because of my achilles being stronger. I ran for over a minute which does not seem like a lot but after 45 hard minutes and then it being a stair climber a minute is a long time. But I found after the minute I had way more left in the tank. I did not keep going for fear of pushing my tendons too hard but for the first time I felt that I could really hammer it. 

So my classes are finished as of last night and a huge weight have been lifted from my shoulders. It was all I could do to hang on with regards to school but just as mentioned before.. in those moments of wanting to quit you usually have break throughs. Indeed I did in schooling by way of classes finishing up! 

So today I think for the first time in over 3 months I will go for an easy 4 mile road run during lunch at work. Will my IT band bother me? Probably. Do I care today? No. If it does it does. I will keep pushing on with my stretching,strength training and limited running in hopes of working through it. If I keep on history tells me there will be a breakthrough. 

When I run at lunch today, if I feel pain from the IT band… With renewed hope of a breakthrough coming I will not be discouraged but just the opposite will be encouraged knowing what lies ahead.

Happy Friday,

Jess