100th Post Challenge

It's my 100th blog post and it's been quite an adventure.  I've had one heck of a journey.  In the last few 100 or so days, I've run a marathon and a 12 hour race, I've trained recklessly out in the sun in the middle of the day, as well as in a gym for more than 4 hours.  I've grown a lot through writing about what I've done, and at the same time, I've also learned a lot more about running and how it has changed my life.

Looking back, I see how I've grown.  The ups and the downs, and looking at the running, it really is similar to my life.  Looking through the other 99 blogs I've posted, I can see where I've stood and where I am now. Physically, I've been up and down, but all in all, I can see that psychologically, I've been steadily growing.  Sooner or later, my goal is to not only steadily grow psychologically, but also physically.  As the 100th blog post, I'm challenging myself to grow further and not stop.  I'd like to see the seeds sown in my life to take root and grow.

Psychologically, I've gained knowledge on how I should train in order to achieve the results that I want.  Now, I'm putting what I've learned into practice and work towards achieving my goals.  As I have stated before, I want to be able to work on my 5k time, marathon time, 50 mile time, 12 hour run, and finish a 100 mile race.  Today marks the beginning of my epic journey.

I have one year from June 10th to finish.  I've challenged myself almost 3 weeks ago, to achieve this, and today is the day that I begin the real journey towards accomplishing it.  In order to achieve this, I need both speed and endurance.  If I want to do well in a 5k, I need the speed.  If I need to finish a 100 mile race, I need the endurance.  The hardest thing isn't training for speed or training for endurance, the hardest thing is to train for both.  That is why I'm excited about the challenge.  If I could accomplish achieving my goals within the year, I would be amazed.  This isn't something that I can do half-heartedly.  This is something I need to focus and work hard towards.

Today, I cycled for an hour doing 18 miles (making me think that yesterday's stationary bike is a lot more different than I thought).  I also did 10 pull ups and 30 push ups.  I also forgot to mention that both yesterday and today, I spent a good 20 minutes stretching to help myself become flexible (to insure I don't get injured and also allow my muscles to work with each other more efficiently).  After that, I hit the sauna, able to let the blood flow through my tired muscles, helping with the recovery.

Taking everything into account, I think I'm at a good place and can't wait to get in shape TO GET IN SHAPE.  In order to get to where I need to be, I need to be in shape so that I could start the hard core training I'm going to get into.  After 2 weeks of muscular fitness, I'll begin piling on the things that I need in order to run my fastest 5k as well as working to run a really fast 50 miler.  2 weeks of pre-training, and then I'll go super-training until October when I have the 50 mile race.  I'm probably going to run a 5k in the winter or spring, but while I'm focusing on getting my 5k time down, I'll also be working on extreme distances... I'm so excited.

Challenges work to better yourself, and it helps push you forward.  The most important thing is to not let it break you.  Challenges are there to better you, not destroy you.  Make sure that when working towards that challenge, you are bettering yourself and taking care of yourself.  With the wrong balance, you might end up hurting yourself.  Use challenges to take you to the next level, because ultimately, that's what challenges are.