Finding my waist-What defines finishing?

How do you classify a Fitness Freak?

I find myself now on Mondays and Fridays impatient for the bus to come because if the bus is late then I’m late to my MANIAC training session. I’m not waltzing in at the last minute like a diva, I’m running in sweating before the class starts because I don’t want to miss it!

Today is a whole body adventure , because April, our instructor has been watching some type of English Tower of London torture videos as she comes up with “fun” exercises for our class. I won’t bore you with the details, but it entailed my shoe slipping in my sweat on the floor, April in my face when I wanted to drop from the 7 minutes of continuous plank, to my grunts when she showed me that my plank was not LOW enough!

Biggest lesson learned when working with these types of classes are lessons learned when you race in that first race-that triathlon, that 5K, that 10K, that marathon. It’s a life lesson in determination. I’ve been in a race and wondered how I was going to finish the last 10K in a marathon, I’ve had the back spasms in a Half Ironman wondering, can I finish this run, I’ve even been in a 5K winded from starting too fast wondering if I can sustain for the last 2 miles!

When you hit that point of thinking of giving up you can do one of two things-give up, put your tail between your legs and move on saying, “This isn’t what I wanted to do” or, pull deep and explore what you have inside you and find that one sliver of reason to finish the damn thing and use that to convince yourself that you can do it. In some cases it’s the “I want that finisher’s medal”, other cases can be, “I’m not going to let my friend beat me” or it can be something as basic as “I’m not a quitter and it’s only 7 or 10 or 30 or 60 more minutes.” Whatever it is, as I try to finish that class, I revisit those races I thought I couldn’t finish and with arms shaking find the last of the strength to pull it off.

The rush of finishing when you think you can’t is better than a race run perfectly. When you’ve been at that edge of the cliff and at the bottom of that cliff is every reason to just say “screw it” and give up, don’t ever think about jumping over because when you’re finished the view is sweeter than anything you could imagine.

What are you waiting for? What stories do you have of overcoming when you think you should give uP?