Next challenge

I successfully completed a three-mile run a few weeks back. Now, the next step in my preparation for the Mud Run is to go a little bit longer.

I guess I could call this the "Mama, I'm Comin' Home" run. I'm going to attempt to jog from my house to my mom's house. It's a five-mile run, which makes it the longest such run I'll attempt to date. Last time, I felt a bit confident because I was going to attempt to run three miles and I'd completed three miles on a regular basis on treadmills at the gym. This time around, though, I will feel confident only because I felt like I still had some gas in the tank at the end of the last run.

What will make this run a bit less stressful is that it won't be on a track. I will have landmarks to get to and overcome and I think that will make the run progress more smoothly. For instance, I'll say to myself 'Okay, just get to the next street' and I will be able to complete it.

Really, that's just a snippet of my mindset throughout my weight loss. I never sat down and told myself 'Okay, lose more than 100 pounds' even when my weight was coming off. It was always 'Okay, let's get down to the 270s' or 'Try to get beneath 250 by November' or whatever it was. That helped because if I'd have thought about it all at once, it would have seemed insurmountable and I wouldn't be wearing size 32 pants today. (Well, actually, today I'm wearing a roomy size 34, but you get my point...)

I will need to complete some other runs before then, of course. I will try and run two of the runs around my neighborhood. Though each is just two miles - or less than half of the distance to my mom's - it is necessary to get them under my belt if nothing else so I can get used to running on streets and sidewalks.