I’m taking a quick break from the miles to share a reflection on becoming an athlete… let’s call it a rest stop 🙂 Mile 16 will be back next week… or whenever I feel that piece of advice is worth sharing!
For a few weeks now I’ve had a blog post floating around in my head from a sideline comment about my running and how I’m approaching it. My husband and I were talking (ok more me obsessing about my running and thinking out loud while he was in the room) about how I was pleasantly surprised to find myself running splits and paces that I’d not been regularly hitting in recent months. Going on and on about how I wasn’t inured this January, and then wondering how that will play out into my spring season, he turns and states “you’re talking like an athlete.”
I’m a mom, wife, employee, friend, volunteer, book club-er, and sometimes laundry folder. I’ve laced up my sneakers thousands of times to go for a run. But, when did that leap happen and I started to take myself seriously and concentrate on running like an athlete?
To be completely honest, that label of athlete still doesn’t feel comfortable. I’m a middle age-woman running at the middle or back of the pack. I don’t get paid to do this. I’m not the fittest person out there. But, I am an athlete.
Google tells me that an athlete is a “person proficient in sports and other forms of physical exercise.” And I agree. That is what I am. I know what I’m doing when it comes to running. I’ve done my research and have the experience behind me to say I’m proficient at it.
I look at my journey from struggling to run around the block to now the struggle to keep to a training schedule and realize that there is improvement there. I might not be qualifying for the Olympic trials, but in my own exercise journey, I’m a proficient athlete. Athletes set goals, create plans to achieve those goals, and surround themselves with a community of like-minded people to continue to make progress to those goals.
Without thinking about it I’ve become an athlete. And I kind of like that label.
