Daring to dream...

Every now and then I surprise myself, I'm reminded that I am strong and capable. Far more capable than I've every believed. Today was one of those days.

I'll back track a little - so yesterday Kate Beck (Round 3 12WBT Inspirational Role Model Award Winner) wrote the most incredibly inspiring and insightful (3I's) post on her blog. You can read it here. Basically 18months ago Kate could only run 200m and on the weekend she ran 30kms...without...stopping...once! A-FRICK-ING-MAZE-ING!!! She has posted lots about her running and the way she has skipped from one distance to another but what shines through is her self-belief.

Early on in her running career someone said to her 'If you can run 1km you can run 5kms' and it has been her mantra ever since. That and 'I've got this'...love it. At the beginning of this round I decided to see this as a completely new round and I had a secret desire to become a runner. I shared this with Kate and she was just beautiful. She encouraged me to change programs to the Learn 2 Run (L2R) program and I did. But that's where it stopped. I carefully avoided logging in and focused on my nutrition - which is important but wasn't getting me any closer to my goal of being a runner.

I think the biggest issue has been that voice in my head, that laughs at my goals and says 'yeah right - as if you can do that'. I do my best to ignore that voice or at least keep it in check but it does niggle away at me. In any case I had a good think last night, after reading Kate's post. I thought about my lightbulb moment and the promise I'd made to myself - that I'm more than just 'the fat girl' and that I deserve to be happy and healthy. I stood up, went and got my workout gear out and set it on the table. I shut down the computer and went to bed on time and set my alarm for 4:30am. I didn't dare breathe a word about it to my darling husband. I have often said over the last few months - 'tomorrow I'm getting up early' and then I don't. I also made an agreement with the amazing Kate to be accountable to each other. I told only Kate that I was planning on getting up to exercise.

So 4:30am the alarm went off. I got up, got dressed, found my iPhone armband, earphones, waterbottle, headlamp (because it was still dark) and I hit the pavement.. When I looked up the plan for Monday's cardio, the L2R program involved 7x 4min intervals - some running, some walking - a total of 28mins. So my goal was to jog for the whole 28mins. I had no idea if I could do that. I have tried to jog the track we walk occasionally before but it's pretty long, and so I thought I'd focus on the time. I did my warm up and checked the timer on my polar - 4mins...so I hat to get to 32mins before I could stop. And off I went.

It got really hard, pretty fast. I quickly realised that my new shoes are gold! There was no rubbing on the arch of my foot like when I gave running a crack a few weekends ago and ended up with blisters in the arches of my feet. Instead it got mentally hard. I found myself thinking of Kate - if she could run 30kms after starting at only 200m, then I could run for 28 mins. I'd gotten close to that on the tready at the gym in June. But I've had a huge break and not done much exercise at all. I told myself  - in Kate's words 'Em, you've got this' and kept jogging.

This self-belief thing is hard going. I'm so used to hiding behind food or whatever. I've never been active before taking on 12WBT at least not for long stretches. So occasionally I need to be inspired by someone else's efforts ad dare to dream that maybe, just maybe I can do it too.

For 28minutes I pushed and bribed myself until the magical number ticked over and I stopped jogging. I really truly did it! I jogged without stopping for 28 whole minutes. The only slight blemish on the event was that my new ap, Map My Run stopped working after only a few minutes so it wasn't an accurate read of how far I went. When I stopped jogging I wasn't home but I was over half way around our circuit, so I walked the rest of the way - grinning from ear to ear.

Before driving to work I drove the route I jogged this morning and was shocked to discover I had jogged 2.8kms this morning - only another 200m and I'd have done 3kms!! I wish I had known that this morning.

So here it is....I want to be a runner. I already am a jogger but I want to get better, faster and be able to run for longer. I've set a goal for the Gold Coast Marathon 2014 - cause there is an awesome group of 30+er's committing to going and competing. I'm thinking....daring to dream...that I might just register for the 10kms. I mean, I nearly did 3 today and it was day 1!!! Imagine what I'll be able to do in 6 months!!!

I just need to keep working on silencing that voice in my head that thinks I can't do these things because obviously it doesn't know what the hell it's talking about. Today is proof of that!!

A special thanks Kate for being an inspiration, for your support and your honesty!!!