The older I get the more I realize and actually grasp the fact that my life is a balancing act. When I was younger I never paid any mind to people who would try and teach me this fact. Luckily I have always had a stay focused or some have said stubborn quality about myself that I stick to things. This morning I had a sick child so my run was postponed but I have chilled out a lot with stressing over missing those because I have realized I can get it before my day is done. I had to arrange a place for him to stay while I was working so he went with my mom today and his other grand mom was to pick him up. As I was driving to work managing getting all of this taken care of I had my phone buzzing constantly. I have two interviews this weekend and I am very excited about these, so I had to arrange a time for them to happen. I talked to a friend of mine over the phone last night and he said he couldn’t understand how I acquired the energy to do all the things I do in a day. When I hear this from people I simply say I just roll with the punches of life. But honestly my life does have to be planned strategically to accomplish the things I want to do. For instance my speed work which I missed this morning. I planned a long tempo run at a good speed, but since I didn’t get to do this I decided to do it all on my lunch break. My lunch break is an hour and a half so I knew I could manage speed in this time frame. Today was terrible weather, we have had tornado watches all day and by lunch it hadn’t started raining yet. Of course as I was walking out for lunch to hit the track, it began sprinkling on me, but I knew I had to get my speed work in. I went to the track and did mile repeats and as I was finishing that last quarter up it began flooding! I did finish all my speed, and I did it at an excellent pace this week. I have taken the advice I got from my friend Kristie and her coach Sam on laying off of my crossfit classes so much and I do feel it is benefiting my running. Besides the rest I have been incorporating a lot more tempo runs in my week and just paying a lot more attention to my speeds. I had a friend of mine from Atlanta inform me this week that I needed to get things rolling if I wanted to get in Boston 2014. I have to BQ by September 2013 to actually get in so speed has been my main focus. With this focus I have to take lots of precautions I know because as I have said before speed is a love hate thing for me because it can be so dangerous on your legs. Every time I have gotten injured in my past it has been due to speed work.
Other exciting news I have had going on lately is I am happy to have Red Line Film Productions coming into town tomorrow. They are interested in doing an interview with me for a running documentary on my life and all my training. I also have another interview with a magazine in Warner Robins GA on Saturday so I have been really excited and busy with getting all the necessary information for all of this. But another exciting event that happened to me happened yesterday. I received an email from a photographer near Macon GA who wanted to do a photo shoot with me. This was such an interesting email because he said he ran across my blog and it inspired him so much. He said it inspired him because his 8 year old daughter recently had to have one of her legs amputated. As I read this I could do nothing but cry. He said that he wanted to shoot some pictures but was sure he wanted me to meet his daughter because I would inspire her greatly. I immediately responded back to him that I would love to and I would also love to shoot some pictures with his daughter and possibly interview her for an inspiration for my blog.
It is a blessing to me to hear people tell me that I inspire them in any way. I don’t believe in regret but I do feel I waited too long in my life to share the things I have experienced. When I ask people to write me their biography for my inspirations on my blog I always tell them it will be therapy for them. Not only will it help them to write this all down, it really does inspire people when you hear someone goes through and survives such tragic events and still pushes forward! When I was asked to give my biography to The Runners Journal last year it was a type of therapy for me too. Because I had not opened up very much on that subject but today I am comfortable talking to people more on it and I am glad because it is a positive thing for people to hear.
