Progress

Make measurable progress in reasonable time. – Jim Rohn

It is a very, very cool thing to see how far you’ve come over a few short months.  As I mentioned in my last post, I have been training for a half marathon since May.  I got the inspiration to run a half-marathon again from a few of my friends from college who were training to run the Pittsburgh half-marathon.  I also remembered how great of shape I was in after running a half-marathon in 2017, and I wanted to get to that point again.

So I set off and began training in May with one of my friends from work.  I started using the Nike Training Club app, which is what I used for the half-marathon in 2017, to schedule my workouts.  It’s really straight-forward and easy to use!  You pick your race date (they’ll let you know if you start training too early or too late) and will adjust workouts based on how many times you want to run per week.  I set mine at 5, which I felt was doable because I was also working a part-time job three days a week.

A few weeks into my training regiment, I got to the point that I had to run 5 miles.  That was the “long run” for that week and also my first 5-mile run since the last time I trained for the half-marathon.  I remember only getting halfway in and feeling defeated- I had unbearable hip pain and I hobbled my way back to my house upset with myself.  I didn’t finish the run.  I remembered coming inside and feeling disappointed, I cried to my husband saying that there was no way I could run a half-marathon this year.  I remember saying, “I can’t even run 5 miles!  How am I going to run over 13?!”  He told me to stay positive and to keep training and I’d be able to do it.

I didn’t quite believe him at that point.  I was worried my hip pain would come back.  See, I had terrible hip pain last year, to the point where it began waking me up in the middle of the night.  I underwent 3-4 months of physical therapy for it and, with the help of the therapists at Select PT, I slowly gained my strength back and my pain subsided.

I was really concerned that that 5-mile day was an indicator of how my future long runs would go.  But, I was wrong.  In fact, I felt myself getting stronger, faster, and I felt better than I could ever remember feeling.

However, a few weeks ago, I got sidelined from another injury.  I was in the midst of an 11-mile long run on a Sunday morning when I felt pain in my foot.  It was a sharp pain, one that I hadn’t felt before, and I tried to push through it.  I was only 7 miles in when I felt the pain, and by 8 1/2 miles, I had to call my mother-in-law and ask her to come and pick me up.  I was limping and crying in pain.  I still don’t know how I injured myself, truthfully.  All I remember was the pain was severe.

I took a week and a half off from running after that, and that was the hardest thing to do because I knew my race was coming up quickly.  I knew I only had a few weeks left of training.  But I did it because I had to listen to my body (and my husband convinced/made me).

I was so worried I would get out of shape in that week and a half off.  However, fast forward to today, and I ran 13.5 miles as my last long run before my race next Sunday.  13.5 miles!  The farthest I have ever run, and I did it despite the setbacks I occurred with training.  That is a great, indescribable feeling.  Not only that, but I came in with a half-marathon time of 1:59:31 when my half-marathon time in 2017 was about 2 hours and 18 minutes or so.  I crushed it.

I’m hoping all of the hard work with this training will pay off next weekend.  I’m really looking forward to my race, and, if I’m being honest, giving my body a break from running all the time and cross-train instead.

So, despite having a breakdown a few months ago and wondering if I’d be able to run a half-marathon again, I proved myself wrong by running more than a half-marathon and crushing my time from my last race.  What an incredible feeling!

Have you ever trained for any race, whether it was a 5k or a marathon or anything in between?  Did you ever notice how much you were improving or did you only notice when you looked back at your training regiment?  Let me know in the comments below.

Until next time,

Emily

Long Time, No See

Hey everyone!  It has been a while.  2019 has been a crazy year so far for me.  I can’t believe we’re already into the second week of October!

Notable things that have happened thus far: I’ve attended 6 different weddings so far and I still have 2 more before the end of the year.  I’m less than 2 weeks away from running another half-marathon.  We painted/rearranged our living room in one weekend as well as painted 2 bathrooms.  I’ve been working a part-time job 3 days a week since April.  Lastly, I finished my first draft of my book!

Writing is hard.  But writing a novel- that’s an entirely different level of hard.  Trying to remember every little detail and creating good flow is harder than I could have ever imagined.  Not that I didn’t already respect authors, but I have a hell of a lot more respect for them now and how much time and effort it takes into finishing up a novel.

I finished my first draft at the end of August at about 61K words and was over the moon! My friend/cousin-in-law Tessa warned me that my first draft would be terrible- in fact, most first drafts are pretty terrible.  I also saw things like that on Pinterest but I never believed that completely.  Boy, did I learn a hard lesson!

I took about 2 weeks or so away from my book once I finished and focused more of my attention on running and freelance writing.  But when I reread it for the first time a few weeks later, I realized how terrible it actually was!

There were plot holes and continuity errors and other details that I hadn’t quite worked out yet that made the story structure so awkward!  Not to mention entirely too much dialogue- some of which I literally had to skim through because it was extremely cheesy.

So I reread it a second time, this time making notes of things that I knew I needed to fix, and I came up with about 8 pages of notes!  Yikes!

I remember feeling immeasurably overwhelmed after writing those notes.  I mean, where would I even start?  How would I check everything off on my lists?  What part would I focus on first?

Well, I’m happy to say that, at least for me, I fell into a sort of rhythm and figured out how I needed to approach my first revision.

I’ve only been editing for a few weeks now, but I’m really just trying to embrace the whole process.  It’s absolutely daunting, but I’m feeling very motivated to get this book squared away.  I started writing this nearly three or so years ago and only got back to it last December, so it’s time this story is told.  I’m only into Chapter 2 right now so I still have a long road to go, but I’m looking forward to finishing it and sharing it with the world.

With that being said, I’m trying to start blogging more often from here on out (at least once a week- hopefully two), so you’ll likely see much more of me from here on out.  I hope you’re looking forward to it as much as I am!

Until next time,

Emily

P.S.- Are you a writer?  If so, I’d love to hear any tips/tricks you have up your sleeve!

 

Photo by Karen Lau on Unsplash

12 Random Facts About Me

In an attempt to make my blog more personal, check out the list below of random facts about me!

1. I’m the youngest child of four, resulting in me being infinitely spoiled by my grandparents as a child and having to learn from my parents at a young age that I, in fact, cannot get everything that I want.
2. Speaking of being the youngest, I always joke about getting the hand-me-down genetics.  To an extent though, I truly do believe it.  I’m only 5 foot half an inch, and I stopped growing in 8th grade.  My two brothers (the oldest two siblings) are both over 6 foot and my older sister is inches taller than me.  So, hand-me-down genetics, right?
3. Being the youngest influenced my parents to bless me with eight names.  Just kidding!  I only have four names but that still confuses everyone- one first name, two middle names, and my last name.  To make matters more confusing, I go by my second middle name.  How?  Two words- my grandma.  She was a saint and helped my parents with me when I was first born (remember, I’m the youngest so my parents were dealing with toddlers and a pre-teen) and she was really in love with the name “Emily,” so when push came to shove, my parents just threw that in after my other middle name because I was the last kid.  I have a hunch that as soon as I was born, my grandma immediately started calling me Emily and that’s how I became stuck with it.  It’s actually a pretty cool story.  Also to note, I have the same name as the royal toddler (Charlotte Elizabeth).  The only difference is the Emily vs. Diana as the second middle name, but I still think it’s pretty cool.
4. I started karate when I was 11.  Chugoku Kenpo Karate, a Japanese style, that literally means “Chinese secret science of the law of the fist and empty hand.”  Also, I was one step away from black belt (in my style, that means a three-striped brown belt) and didn’t move forward to my black belt only because of timing (I was in college, it was difficult to cram all of the testing into summers and holiday breaks).  But I’m very close with my sensei and she’s like a second mom to me.  She’s the first person in the first row on the left.
5. I have done other sports, too!  Karate was my first love, but running is a close second.  I did cross-country and track from middle school through college.  In fact, I just ran my first half-marathon in my hometown last weekend!
   

   

   Two hours and nineteen minutes later…

6. And that handsome man in that picture is my fiancé, who I met in college and have been dating for four years, engaged for two, and who I’m getting married to in just 17 short days!  And in reference to my names that I listed earlier, I told Kyle I was going to hyphenate as a joke to just continue the ridiculous length of my name.
7. Speaking of weddings, I have a kickass pair of heels that I splurged on (treat yo’ self!) but I actually HATE shoes.  I mean I love the heels that I got and I really am looking forward to wearing them, but I hate anything being on my feet, unless they’re sandals where my feet can breathe.  (This means I hate socks, too!). As a side note, when I say “splurge” I really only mean like $60, which is WAY better than what I spend on running shoes (~$100) but it still doesn’t sit well with me to spend that much on one thing.
8. I love walking and running and hiking and traveling to new places.  I’ve been to several states in the US, but I’ve also fortunately had opportunities to travel to England and Germany.  Next on my bucket list: Ireland, Italy, and Switzerland, hopefully!
   

   
9. Here’s a weird one for you that I’m sure not many people can relate to: I HATE cheese.  Absolutely hate it.  Hate the smell, hate the taste, hate the texture.  I’m un-American (my fiancé’s words, not mine).  I’m not sure what happened.  I used to love Mac and cheese as a kid, along with cheesy pizza, but something clicked one day and I gagged when I bit into a previously thought delicious slice of Papa John’s pizza.  To the people who love cheese but cannot have it due to their digestive systems, I’m the worst, and I apologize for my un-Americanness.
10. Speaking of weird things, I have an irrational fear of…..water.  Yep, you read that right.  Whenever I go into a pool, or an ocean, I have to stay in a level where my feet can always touch the ground.  I know what you’re thinking- can you swim, can you tread water?  I can do both of those things.  However, for whatever reason, the moment I’m in a body of water that’s deeper than neck level, I freak out because that’s when I have to be on tippy toes and any further I feel like I’ll drown.  You guys probably think I’m so weird by this point.
11. But something that’s pretty cool and un-weird is my love for tattoos.  I love how the same designs (i.e. Harry Potter tattoos) can mean something completely different to another person, and I love how you can express what you’re feeling on your body.  I have two tattoos, and they’re both for my grandma on my dad’s side who passed away of lung/metastasized breast cancer.  She lived in Texas so I only met her a handful of times before she passed away, but she made a huge, positive impact on my life.  The first tattoo I got was a flower that was designed by my sister.  The second tattoo was from my favorite book, “Slaughterhouse-Five,” and it lists the famous quote, “So it goes…”  My sister and I got that one together in almost the same spot on our bodies.  She has also designed another tattoo from Slaughterhouse-Five with the quote “Everything was beautiful and nothing hurt” in remembrance of my grandparents on my mom’s side (yes, the grandma who gave me my name).  But that is a story for another time.
12. Lastly before this post gets absurdly long, I clean when I’m upset.  Why?  I have no idea.  I supposed it relieves stress?  Any psychologists have any idea why I do this?

 

I’d love to learn about you!  Share a random fact (or several, if you wish), or even rant to me about my un-Americanness in the comments section.  I look forward to reading them!