fit as fxck

Never take running for granted. Running is a privilege.

Holy sheet I can’t wait to be tan and wear shorts and be sweaty and fueled by grilled kabobs and fruit and jump into rivers and be outside after 8 and still be able to see and wake up WITH the sun instead of BEFORE the sun and smell like sunscreen and dirt and brew sun tea with lemons

The more you're struggling, the kinder I need you to be to yourself. It's going to make it unbelievably harder and more painful for you if you're beating yourself up for what you can't do right now, or blaming and hating yourself for all the ways that your struggle is inconveniencing your life.

One thing they don’t tell you about running is how lonely it can be. We might all be in this together but the hours and effort we put in are mostly solo. You spend a majority of the time psyching yourself up just to get out the door and giving yourself silent pep talks. Even your biggest cheerleaders don’t see the actual time and effort you put in. No one sees the monotonous and unglamorous runs alone, the bad runs and the ones you barely finish. No one knows how many times you had to convince yourself to keep going, knowing no one besides you would even care if you quit. No one except you knows the feel of completing a race on your own terms and gloriously crossing the finish line with no one to greet you on the other side. They don’t see you sitting alone on a curb mentally high-fiving yourself after the race with a “Good job. You came far. You did this.” They don’t know how many times you overcame feeling disheartened and defeated and discovered gusto in places you didn’t know existed. So yeah, you accept that the journey is lonely at times, mostly lonely, but it’s your journey and yours alone. We might post the high points because they seem noteworthy but the real moments, those intimate moments when no one is watching, are the ones that create everything. No one will really know the depths that it took just to get where you did, especially when no one but you is cheering you on.

Very well said. As this brilliant girl has said, no one tells you when you decide to start running that it’s going to be so lonely. People will only see the results, but very few people, not to say that just you, will know all the effort and suffering behind. You may not dedicate yourself to it professionally, but that doesn’t mean that it’s going to be a bed of roses. There will always be moments of enthusiasm, but it will be in the moments when you do not feel like it, when the weather doesn’t help or neither does your body. and it will be at that moment, only you will be the one who is able to overcome, tie your shoes and run.