I just finished my third full week of training for my upcoming half marathon in January. I was a little nervous to move from 3 miles per day (for the first two weeks) to 4 miles per day. But when I saw my stats in Map My Run after my workout, I was tickled pink! I ran at a good pace for me!

Even better – and more surprising – when I wrote in my running journal about my 4 miles, I paged back to find the last time I ran that much. I knew it'd been a while, but what a shock to see the last time was in September 2013! The day I ran my last half marathon, the Run for CHUM charity run for my sister's therapeutic riding facility in Michigan.

Wow.

Strangely, I was nervous again on Wednesday. What if I was tired now and much slower? I was so nervous that I'd suck, I skipped my circuit training on Tuesday to regain my strength. But Wednesday was great, too! I decided to do my circuit training on Thursday because I must get stronger in order to run faster, but I knew I might be slower Friday just from being tired.

I did great Friday, too! (And so I made up my missed circuit training session on Saturday. 😉 )

My body is really beginning to show me that it's happy to be getting stronger, even though sometimes it's not fun to try to do exercises I can't do for the 40 seconds per circuit round. Forty seconds, guys. Sheesh. But…every week I'm a tiny bit better. I can see small changes when I look in the mirror.

And once I started envisioning myself running faster while trying to do a 60-second plank, I was able to stay up and straight for the whole 60 seconds! The more I envision myself getting stronger, the stronger I get. It's so cool! (For more information on cool things your brain can do, read You Are the Placebo by Dr. Joe Dispenza. Awesome book!)

If you're working on improving your health, exercising more, training for a run, or anything that requires a lot of effort for small changes, keep going! Don't give up! Together, we can achieve our goals.  🙂