Confidence Boost

I had a weird confidence boost that started Thursday night. I had a great run with a fun group in temperatures that didn’t make my hands hurt. The boost continued into Friday morning when I ran a course I always run in the fastest time ever…AND STILL WAS NOT FREEZING TO DEATH. I did almost 20 miles on Saturday in three different runs and then did 13 yesterday which all puts me much closer to being “on track” with my 12-hour run training than I’ve been up until this point.

I’ve not necessarily had a great eating week (Damn you, Super Bowl food!) but I woke up this morning just feeling good. When I was thinking about what to write this morning I kept coming back to topics surrounding the concept of, “Hey! I’m Okay!” And I had several…SEVERAL ways I wanted to write about that! I THOUGHT OF SEVERAL GOOD THINGS TO SAY ABOUT MYSELF. MORE THAN ONE!

I just wanted to point that out because I’ve had several low points over the last few months where I write about my failures or my anxiety or my sadness. But this morning? I woke up wanting to write about the things I like about myself. The things I’m proud of…and I think this will come as a nice surprise to those of you suffering through my, “I’m the WORST PERSON IN THE WORLD entries.”

So! Here is the “Kim Is Actually Not That Bad” angle I’m taking today!

I have two running friends and we were starting our training for our next hard-core trail race (This will be my third year, here are year one and year two reports.) There’s a big group that meets on Saturdays on the trails here to train for upcoming races, but they tend to be fast and good (although they welcome all paces) and we decided maybe we should post OUR training runs as “Newbie Friendly/No Runner Left Behind” and see if we would have any takers. People who maybe would want to train too, but were a little intimidated by the other group.

AND GUYS! We’ve had TONS of great response! We’ve done three now and our smallest group was 13 people! And yesterday? Yesterday we had FAST people show up! Probably because we do it on Sunday and the other group meets on Saturday, so some of the fast people joined us because they couldn’t run on Saturday. But still! We had like 20 people! Or more! (I’m not good assuming quantities by site alone. Like the time I told someone a park was 8 acres when it was actually 80 acres. SO CLOSE.) I’m just really proud of our group! And proud that there are people responding to our Facebook posts and actually showed up and…and…I think they had fun! LOOK! I’m part of a group that organizes runs with strangers! WHAT HAS HAPPENED TO ME?!?!

I posted an invitation to runners in a local Facebook group and invited people I didn’t know to join me doing something I’m not always confident about. Then I met those groups THREE TIMES and figured out ways to manage the groups so that no one gets left behind (We have SWEEPERS…that is the KEY.) and no one is TOO miserable running slow. (They might have to wait at intersections, but still. They can run fast to get there.) AND THREE SUCCESSFUL RUNS!

//instagram.com/p/j6ZA1hwVal

I have basically faced 143 demons with each run. I mean, I don’t sleep well the night before, I arrive 30+ minutes early, I print up and waterproof directions and carry maps on my phones. It’s not easy, or relaxing but I’m feeling very proud of my little running group and how many people we’ve brought into trail running in the last three weeks. WE ARE SO AWESOME.

How’s that for a change of mood around here?