Why not to be lost..

The sounds.
The sights. God the sights were so amazing. 
The feeling. 
The click. 
The snap.

What was it? What exactly did you do? You ask yourself over and over what you missed in the last while but you don't know exactly where you misplaced yourself. You just knew you were lost. You tripped and fell hard. Falling down the black hole as you stared up at the sun as you continued to fall deeper down the dark abyss. The deeper you fell the harder it became.

We all know the feeling. Sometimes we fall off our paths and get lost...

It takes something sharp for us to click back in to life. Sometimes we have to see the blood to realize there is pain.

Once you heal the wounds, you pick yourself up, throw on your track shoes, and get back on the track.

You've never lost your way. 

Start. 

Start with the realization. 

Just start, and you're way ahead of everyone else who is still falling down that hole looking back at you as you climb up to the surface.

How to be lost..

"I'm lost in the things that matter."
So vague, yet so simple.

Through the difficult times, you find things that matter. You immerse yourself in the process. Find what makes you happy in life, and execute it with purpose. 

As I continuously grow as a person through these experiences, I find myself with new limits and expectations.

One step at a time I'm right where I need to be.

I'm lost exactly where I want to be.

Resilience in The Face of Adversity..

Over time we endure problems a long our paths. It's how we react to these adversities that defines us.

I'm not a well liked person. I'm strong, I do what I want, I speak my mind, and if there is something I want to achieve, I go and do it. Why wait? It's so close, just push yourself to get there. I don't care if you don't like me, because I'm achieving my goals..



It's been a year now with injuries on and off. I figured out the weight needs to go. I have 18 more pounds to go and I'm getting there. It's steps, albeit small, in the right direction.



People constantly tell me things such as:

You're too old.
You won't make it.
You work too much to excel in track.
Why waste your money on it.

But they don't know who they are talking to. I don't follow the typical person. Nor do I follow the typical athlete profile. No one is predisposed to being a certain way. It's created and refined. I WILL push my envelope and get it done.



Nothing in life was invented following the same thing that was always done.. so why would I do what everyone else does?

Dream big and keep your thoughts bigger.

The story of a girl and her foot..

Starring Plantar Fasciitis as the lead role, with shin splints playing the antagonist role. The movie started in January, and it continues on. The more I work on distinguishing their roles in this movie, the more they seem to linger on. I have proficiently snuffed the previous lead role of "Left Hip Pain." He comes back to me once in awhile begging to come back but I refuse his posting.




Plantar Fasciitis is one of those characters that was self created. He's not well liked by most, and usually appears after speed related track workouts. Lately he has been fighting alongside Shin Splints. They hate each other, yet seem to work so well together in the bigger picture of things. I've had many therapists try to get them to work a long side each other, but each one makes the other worse.



Then we have the deeper part of the story. Food! My director said that for each pound of food in the movie equals 5-7 pounds of force on the body for each impacting force on the track. I like his story, but it doesn't work well for this movie. It only makes the star and the antagonist more pissed off, because they want the best catering service around, and I can't get that for them 24/7. They run around like a bunch of crazy Italians pissed off and yelling at each other and me about the food content on this movie set.



I'm becoming quite frustrated with the fact this movie has taken so long to reach its full performance and potential. I understand fully, but I realize that there are more steps that are needed in this process. I take full responsibility! I've taken a few days away from the set, and I think that some more time might be needed away from the characters and the set. A little bit of gym and bike time is required.

A bit more focus in to the catering business might be a splendid idea as well.

And onward we go.

In to the process..

The part I love about injuries is hunger. It's the hunger that you can't have it. Every day that goes by doesn't go by with more determination and drive than the last day. Albeit frustrating at times, you know it's a process. Every day being a day to better yourself from yesterday. Another day to become a better you.

(Some outside time on a work break in BC)

Are you going to sit there and stand by as your competitors continue to excel and get better? NO. You're going to do everything that you can do at that moment. You're injured? Great! You can focus on strength and power. You can make that machine better than it was before.



Injuries can be weakness, so you can make that body part stronger than ever..

I thought it was going to be a few weeks, but it turns out hips are a pretty important body part ;)
The hip is healing.
The plantar fasciitis is a process.

It's all steady and we are working small steps every day.

With that being said, I decided to do some rehab in Hawaii for 2 weeks.

Time to taste the sunshine.

M

Another coffee, another day.

I ask myself where I am today and it's hard to describe. Where do I exist on my timeline of training? I am taking a minimum of two weeks off the track right now. My left hip issue has been slightly over bearing. The constant hitting of the track wearing spikes during speed endurance has put phenomenal pressure on my right plantar fascia.

Night splint to keep calf and tendons stretched during the healing process at night.

As an elite level athlete, it's hard to describe to someone who runs that it was hard for you to come up with the decision to take time off. I've battled with these two minor injuries for the last three weeks. It's been a constant rotation of feeling better and producing amazing results, and not being able to walk the next day, and coming back at it two days later. The extreme detrimental part of this was that my mood was fluctuating constantly. A great work out would turn in to high levels of stress concerning the injuries and the pain they were creating for me. I would binge eat. The feeling of stress would be over whelming. I want to run well, but some of the days training would be cut short, and so I would turn to food that would make me feel better. Of course, this line of action was moving towards heavy carb and sugar laden food. So we all know what happened after these incidents... The crash and the weight gain.
Delectable chocolate goodies.

Being someone with blood sugar sensitivity issues, I don't just eat healthy for the reason of training. It keeps me sane, it keeps my moods elevated, that's what I need, and this binge eating wasn't keeping my mood levels stable.


People will say, why don't you just avoid it? You can run 400m hurdles, hurt yourself and keep running, yet you can't control these urges? WELL YES, they are right, how does one push their limits on a consistent basis yet they can't control an impulsive behavior of avoiding sugar laden food. I'll give it to you straight. Working five days a week, driving straight to practice, training, and coming home at 8pm every night. It's a regular routine. It can be so overwhelming, and sometimes the outlet is food to feel better. Food has been the easiest thing to turn to in these high cortisol moments. This needs to stop.Low - dye taping procedure for plantar fasciitis.

Rehab has started this week. I worked myself up to the fact that I was probably going to take time off, and Saturday's practice was the deciding factor. It was an easy CF big circuit tempo workout and I struggled to control the pain from the injuries when the workout was about 75% done. I knew it was time to do what I had been going over and over again in my head. Taking time off. I was ready for this. No negative feelings come attached with this time off. I know what I need to do. The main focus is body recomposition and rehabilitation. During this time I will also have a mental break from the stresses of track work, and come back with a bang, and super fresh mental motivation.
Bike sprints.

My advice to other athletes. No matter what people say to you, trust your own body, trust your injuries. If you aren't able to finish a workout without being in pain, you need to take time off. It's hard, but it's better now than later. If you continue on through these injuries, you will only hurt yourself more, and cause more mental pain than the physical pain by choosing to continue through.

Stick with your rehabilitation therapy and make sure you are aggressive with it daily. Don't forget to think outside of the box. Look for the less used methods, they might just work for you.

and ICE, ICE, ICE!

Love and strength,

Melissa

Measurement of Time..

As track athletes we always seem to be chasing that elusive number. How quick can we get there, and what can we do to get there? You ask yourself, what's it going to take? What do I need to do to be the best? For me it is quickly turning in to an obsession. Everything I do I ask myself, will this help me? Every week seems to be a progression, even if minor, there is still constant movement forward.

That battle that I can find difficult sometimes is:

How much is too much?

By that I am saying if I run for 30 minutes instead of 20 am I really helping myself, or am I furthering my chance of injury. On my off days I am discovering what is an appropriate workout for active recovery. I'd rather run, I want to get outside and feel the pounding of the track on my legs. I want to feel the struggle of trying to keep my form together. I treat every training session as a challenge. If that happens to be a speed day or a tempo day, I treat it the same, and there is no room for mistakes, or lack of effort. So as much as I want to be out there, I am learning that there is such a thing as too much, and I am working at setting limits for myself. This is especially important since I seem to be red-lining injuries these days. (Isn't every track athlete?!)


Since the last time I posted I ran a new training mile pb of 5:55... That would be a 26 second pb. I blitzed the other two girls and was close behind the two guys. Not bad for a 400m hurdler I'd say ;) . My fitness seems to be coming a long, and I'm happy to say that it will only improve as I am putting it up on the list of priorities right now.

Nom nom.

There is nothing quite as satisying as beating your training partners in practice, or setting new training pbs. Which I accomplished both during the mile. Many times I have mentioned that you can't be comparing your journey to other team mates, but I find this hard. I am always measuring my runs to my team mates. Perhaps this can be harnessed to providing good motivation to become better. I will tweak this.


Another fantastic workout was 6x200m off 2min rest. 31, 31, 30, 29, 29. Coming from a distance background, I have this great skill of being able to hold on, and cut down time pretty efficiently in reps.
/proud moment

While others are breaking down, you need to hold on and persevere.

Why are you here? Remember to answer this question every time you train, every time you are on the track. Every session is valuable, so work hard, and learn from it.

100mH Alternates Video

Vulnerability..

What is vulnerability?  Vulnerability is being open to the possibility that you can be hurt.  Letting your guard down and opening yourself up to the chance of failing. Or in this case, falling.

Yesterday was hurdle day. To our surprise, we had decided to move up to the 200m hurdles, instead of doing the 100m hurdle repeats. This meant that we were starting 400m race portions. Exciting and progressional, yet slightly intimidating. Intimidating because there is so much that can go so wrong, and you NEED to be focused and have everything pretty technically sound. 

One thing before I move on, most people say you do not need to be technically sound to run the 400m hurdles. They say that as long as you are fast and can power off the hurdle effectively, you'll do just fine. I don't agree with this. Why do something haphazardly if you can do it perfectly? There's no room for error in a race. "Acceptable" and "satisfactory" hurdling are words that I will never accept.

The 200m hurdles were set up. The first 200m in the race with 5 hurdles set up. Warm up went okay, but something was off. My left hip was tight. It's always tight, I don't have a full time masseuse yet, and once a week isn't cutting it. I need DEEP work done weekly. The hip was more tight than usual, which was putting me off kilter every time I used it as a trail leg. Not the best, but acceptable when running higher speeds, as the momentum will help carry you.  I started the first rep with my usual start position, left leg on the start line. This is what I'm used to, but I know running full speed I'm going to hit that first hurdle with my left leg being the lead on the turn. For those of you who don't hurdle, this gets your body landing not towards the turn. Knowing this, I wanted to run the first one out of comfort, and make adjustments later. Probably not the best idea. So It went almost full speed. As the body starts to come up out of drive phase you see hurdle one approaching you at a very fast pace on the turn. That feeling is so intimidating, and I was trying to tell the younger girl that this is what it's going to be like. You're scared. You don't know what's going to happen, but you have to face it, and you have to just go for it. You can't slow down, you need to attack it, and you need to know that no matter what, it will work out.

I made it over the first hurdle with some inconsistant stride patterns. The rest of the hurdling was sub par on this rep! I was so focused on attacking and running hard that I was over striding coming up to the hurdles. One of them was a stutter. It felt so good to run over these fast, yet scary seeing these things come up to you so fast, regardless of only being 30 inches high.

2nd rep. I was told to be lighter on my feet, more up tall. I switched start legs and I was slightly mind blown on how to get the power out of my legs starting like this. I think from now on I need to only practice running starts and speed work this way. I stuttered to the first hurdle, I was all over the place! I hit the 4th hurdle with my tight hipped trail leg. Of course it was acompanied with a loud yell. I'm quite the vocal hurdler, and I express pushing myself hard with noise, ha. Hitting that hurdle with my trail leg wasn't really a good choice, but it was very evident that my striding was all worng, because the more I tried, the more everything didn't work. I was over thinking the whole process.

3rd rep. Start line, GO. It seemed to be working. OH, maybe not... Stuttered to the first hurdle. Try to make up the striding coming off the first hurdle and notice I'm not going to make it to the next hurdle. I proceed to over stride approaching the next hurdle. It was very slow motion in my head. I leaped and new immediately that I was taking off far too soon, but there was nothing I could do to escape what was bound to happen. My lead leg extended and I started coming down ON the hurdle. so instead of cutting down just after the hurdle, my leg was coming down right on the hurdle, scraping my achilles and lower calf. As this was happening, my back started to flip backwards as my center of gravity was off. My lead leg landed on the support bar on the bottom of the hurdle and I twisted my trail leg as it landed. OKAY, I stopped, not as bad as it could've been, but it was a wake up call. Everything I was doing was wrong, and this over striding habit has got to stop, otherwise something bad was going to happen, IE a detrimental injury or broken bones. 

My concerned coach talked to me, and what she was saying started to click in my brain. I can't be over striding. In fact, I need to be taking a whole other step. The hurdle will come up fast, but that's where your quick hurdling skills and cut down skills come in to play. I decided that from this moment on I'm going to realize that it's likely not going to be "if" but "when" I bail on a hurdle, and I need to realize this and run my season accordingly. This was a point of vulnerability. I had to trust that what my coach was saying made sense, and that I needed to forget evereything I had learned in my past, and take another step. It was scary thinking about this. What if I don't make it? What if I hit the hurdle coming up to it? Doesn't another step mean that I'm going to be so close to the hurdle that I'll just run through it?! I couldn't think like this, I turned off my brain and realized I needed to trust what my coach was saying, and realized that what I was doing was not working, so I had to trust a whole new process.

I approached the start line and cleared my brain with my quick focus work that I do. It works so well, I can clear everything and just turn it off. I decided instead of running "bat sh*t crazy," that I just slow down a touch and focus harder. What happened was a succesion of hurdles being ran with perfect striding and perfect hurdling.The bets hurdling I've done in years. It made me happy. Every hurdle that came up to me just made sense. I took that extra step, I trusted what was going to happen and although it was slightly harder to do, it worked. It didn't ruin my momentum and each leg hit the hurdle at the appropriate striding. When something like this happens, I can't even tell you how good it feels. It makes the last 3 months of hurdling obsolete. This practice has set the standard and I now know what I need to do next time. It only gets better from here. 

This little act of vulnerability let me know that this is going to be a fantastic season, and I can't wait to get in to competition time.

xXXXx

Melissa

Configuration..

Good day to all. Today is a bit of a discussion on running in to complications with the diet, but the big topic on today's blog will be discussing motivation and having positive support in your life.

As people, we all struggle with finding motivation to do things. Getting there is half the battle, and when you arrive, all follows in to a dominoe effect of completion. As track athletes, I think we struggle a little bit differently. Getting there isn't half the battle, it's completing the work out. I have a long day at work, my my day starting at 6:15am. Practice starts at 5:30pm, so by this time it's all ready a 11 hour day and we haven't even started the main part of the workout ;) ... The hard part is knowing you have to complete the workout. It's the part where you know you have to exceed the standards. You can't just "run." There needs to be heart in it. There needs to be a huge amount of focus. You can't just run it to what's expected, you need to push yourself to better your standards, because you won't get anywhere being complacent.

Einstein once said that a crazy person is someone who does the same thing over and over again expecting a different result. So that's it. That's what it is. There is no running in your comfort zone. It's a huge mental piece of work to stay strong through a practice. You're fighting your own battle and you can't rely on your team mates to carry your times. Most of the time they seem to be wrong with pacing any way ;) You can't focus on where they are. YOU are training by yourself. YOU and YOU alone. 

The physical pain I can handle, unless it's injury type pain, which then causes me emotional type pain. HA, funny how that is. I hate cutting practices short, like Monday's practice. 300 (45), 200 (30), 200 (29) and 3x150m. 50m in to the 150 running by myself the quad jolted.. There's a big lump there, it's annoying. I haven't been able to roll it out, well... I TRIED, no luck. 

We don't necessarily like practice, but we know it's what makes us get to the top. It's the hard expectations we put on ourselves not to fall short that makes training difficult sometimes.

This is why it's very important to keep positive people in your life. Negativity isn't tolerated well when it's constant. I've realized this over the years after removing some people from my life. If your life is negative, FIX IT!!! IT'S THAT SIMPLE!! There is a solution for everything. Bring positive people in your life and everything improves. 

I'm happy for the people in my life, they teach you things. Friends are everything to me.

My mother once laughed and told me... "Melissa, they have no idea who you are now.. but they will fear your name one day again." Talking about entering in to races. THIS is what i'm talking about. Some people are so afraid to sound cocky or super confident to their friends, but you have no idea how great positive words can be. I think you can change a whole person's day by your words.

I always do my best to see this in people and give them affirmations.

FOOD!! I made the best food, and I have a new recipe I created.. Melissa's killer beans:

Beans

Bacon fat

Chili flakes

Poultry spice

Garlic

BOOM! Done, amazing.

I also made a super easy dish, I don't even know what it was, but the acidity of the tomatoes is cut by the yams.

The "Dish"

Grassfed beef

Garlic

Dill

Cilantro

Bacon pieces

Yams cooked and diced

Crushed tomatoes

2 farm fresh eggs

Half an avocado

Red pepper

Although "THE DISH" is amazing, I think I could live on a steady diet of my killer green beans.. MMMMM NOM NOM NOM.

Eating is super hard, how do you do it? Paleo, not paleo, 4 hour body by Tim Farris. SO MANY RULES?! It all can be so contradicting and I'm not sure what to do some days. Especially since the world athletics nutrition guide is also different. It said not to eat lentils. Phytic acid. I'm back on lentils now. Lentils = Lose weight, fill you up.

Sigh, I'm sure it will all make sense eventually. I want my damn cheat day though.

Good day! (british accent)

M

Steps in the right direction..

It's monday the 5th. The first work day of the new year. Is it wrong if I was excited to come in to work today? It's good to have a positive group of friends at your work to make it worthwhile to come in. It's fun to share stories and laughter.  People want to pick my brain about my new diet... AND THAT COFFEE THO.

Today was my frist experience trying the Buleteproof coffee. For those who don't know what this is, it's  black coffee with copious amounts of fat.. 2 tbsps butter and 2tbsp MCT oil. I opted only for the grass fed butter approach, and not 2 tbsps worth.. Maybe just 1? Now I was unable to blend it, but it still tasted pretty damn good over my Stirhouse Kenyan pour over. My new daily start is a whey shake with water, and then I tried this coffee. I lasted til about 11 without eating. I think I could last til 12, but I'm not sure how my colleagues would feel about me not eating. ;) I also don't think I like the lack of nutrients, and copious amounts of fat. I am not going to lie, the new fat in my diet is pretty fun, I seem to have more energy. I may just have a heart attack, that's all. Ha.

Today will be a super experimentation with carbs. I will have lunch as my last meal til training, with heavy carbs following practice. The thought here is no/minimal carbs until after training. Lunch will be protein citttyyyyyyy BOOM!

Friday I had the liberty of finding out my favourite organic place, Organic World in maple ridge, was closed forever. I don't think I need to go to maple ridge every again, ha. I managed to find a place close by that carried grass fed beef.  This is a new concept for me, going from eating chicken to beef.

What macro's do you guys follow? Post in the comments section below.

Saturday practices are always pretty intense, and the lovely Christine is now coming to practice. This made things a little interesting, as now I have a 3rd in Canada hurdler to train with.

3 sets of 2x300's Yummy.. Consistant 52,56 throughout, with my stronger run being the second one of each set surprisingly. This was a good day, and it was good to start getting on a structured path. It's amazing how much we as humans need structure. I could go on forever about how I think it's so good for people, but I'll spare you the details today.  A good weekend, and a great sense of control coming in to the new year with my life. I see exactly where I want to go and the things that are required to get there. I have great feelings about this year in all parts of my life. I think my multiple decisions about coaching will also play a huge positive role in my life this year.

Now if we could only get through these torrential down pours? I almost want to buy one of those fancy fire places.

My advice to my readers today: Be in control of your life. If you don't like something, fix it! Everything is easy if you make it easy. :)

Enjoy the day, and train through the rain, no excuses.

M Dawg.

The beginning of an amazing transformation..

As I sit here in Starbucks with my venti latte, I recall the past year and everything that has happened to me during that time. What I have learned, and where I have grown.  I'm sure most of you can relate, but I've been waiting to come here to write and drink this coffee all day. There is something quite magical about coffee, maybe it's the way the hot liquid streams down your throat and heats up your insides. Or the way it brings an over all sense of calmness to you. Mmmm yes, that would be it. Before I recall the last year, I want to recap the rest of the Florida camp, and go over my major accomplishments that occurred.

The 27th was a nice fun tempo workout on the grass with no shoes. I focused on pelvic neutrality and keeping the shoulders back and relaxed. 2 sets of 10x100m's. 45 seconds rest between each rep and a 100m walk back rest every 5 reps. It was good, a special kind of endurance. It's an interesting feeling being able to ground yourself. Every time your foot touches the grass it's quite lovely. It's as if things just.. work. Neutral grounding. 60 minutes of pool.

The 28th was a nice day off, but we know that a day off isn't really a day off. I decided to do some pool tempo work on my own, just to keep things interesting, and to keep the fat loss continuing.. Copious amounts of butter is still tickling my fancy daily.

The 29th....... Can we just pause here and not continue? This is too grand of a day to even talk about. No words can describe what happened on this day. I woke up to the sun shining and delectable breakfast food tantalizing my nostrils. I don't think I have ever enjoyed breakfast more than I have being on this camp. The sun is to reach a high of 27 Celsius on this day, and I am counting the hours to my allotted training time at the track. The time passes with music and the hype up. You know what I love about the hype up? Nothing else can get in my way. It's me time, I'm prepping my brain to perform, and I'm harvesting all of my feelings about running in to one stock pile of energy. The time comes, YES!   We swapped workouts, wasn't feeling quite up to 250's and 200's... How about some quality speed on your last day in the sun, he asks. YES, YES, easy answer. We worked on starts and proper spinal alignment. What an improvement. After plenty of starts and a lot of speed up to 100m, we decided to do a good piece of quality....

"I want to see what my 150m is."

......I go, I fire out, and boom, it looks beautiful, it feels beautiful. I feel like a goddess attacking the track.

19.23 WINNNNNINNNGGG. Over a second off of my personal best this whole year. Fantastic. This little ball has some speed left in her still! I am excited to see where I can actually get to with quality speed work, and some explosive work. We capped off with a 110m. Great, good way to end the trip, great way to end the day.. Got in to the pool just after 10pm and did a quick 30 minutes of pool time..

So check out the accomplishments of this trip.. 

-Running great speed over the hurdles, with average flight time of 0.32-0.34 (keep in mind with only a 60fps camera on that analysis)

-19.23 150m SB

-I LOST 10 POUNDS IN 10 DAYS. WOW. WOW?!

HA on to the next....

New Year's Eve was a warmup on the grass day.. Can't do too much after flying.

[][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][] Okay, let's get in to the important conversation here... I hit the track today for my first workout of 2015. The sun was hitting the track perfectly. Despite the fact it was only 1 Celsius, the sun was heating things up just the right amount for me to get some decent speed in. My brain was pretty occupied for this work out. Of course things shut "off" when it's time to go, or do a rep.. But the time in between, not so much. It wasn't a bad thing, a lot of self reflection happened, and I was lucky to recall my entire year.

2014 was a long year.  The last 2 years have been an interesting struggle for me in all aspects. I think I have discovered more about myself during this time, than a good portion of my time on earth. A big time on self discovery, and a lot of lessons. 2014 came quick with a gentle reminder not to trust people so easily. It began this way, and was subtlety reminded before the year came to a close. People can say things all they want, but until their words match their actions, it means nothing. ABSOLUTELY nothing, remember this. It's a little push to keep to yourself a bit more. I'm speaking of different relationships. People you are interested in, and people you want to have in your life as a coach or friend.  Trust yourself on all occasions. Don't second guess yourself, and don't be so keen to give away your friendship so easily. People can mean well, but you need to set heavy structure and boundaries. 2014 brought me renewing friendships, and bringing a few ladies close in to my life. I cherish these relationships so much, and I'm glad I worked hard at getting these people to where they are in my life today. They mean the world to me and I'm grateful for that. Quality, not quantity, my friends. I'm glad I can be there for them..

2014 was a big year on self discovery. Figuring out who I am and what I'm looking for. Of course I still have questions, and I imagine I will always have questions... But things make a lot more sense to me now. Things still get to me, but I'm learning how to exude control of these feelings. My biggest step in the last 7 days was controlling my impulsive eating behaviours.  Do you feel something right now? Give it 20 minutes, do you still want to say the same thing? Do you still want to eat that piece of cake? No. Control your impulses, and give it time. Ask yourself.. What do you really want? Do you want that for the right reasons, or are your feelings trying to control you? This will be my major work for 2015. Every day seems to be showing me ways to exercise this, and even a little "lesson" here or there.

It's truly amazing what you can do if you put your mind to it. YES YOU CAN.

Injuries plagued me in 2014, and many tears of frustration were had. Having patience was the most difficult part, and so much running was filled with tears of pain as well as I tried to fight through achilles tendinopathy. I pulled out of my first race, 200m in to it. I was ready to roll these girls and get a new SB. But it happened, and it was the strangest thing watching people finish the race and knowing exactly where I would've placed and what time I was going to run. That race changed the game, and I became more aware of pain. I started to learn that pain was no longer an acceptable thing to happen to me. Pain wasn't going to get me to the next race, pain was going to keep me OUT of the next race. My time is short, and I'm not about to kill my chances of running ever again (tendinopathy can last for a year if bad enough.) 

I met an amazing person in 2014 that helped me realize my true potential as a person, and as an athlete. He made me realize that there is so much more than just "running." Mechanics are everything. He boosted me and helped me to get where I am today. I don't think I could be getting to my potential without him in my life! Another grateful, and quite random meet up that happened in my life.

So to 2014, thank you for teaching me things. Thank you for showing me that I need to push myself to the limit. Thank you for teaching me to be more careful with my heart. Thank you for bringing my friends closer in to my life, and also my parents.  Thank you for teaching me so much about people. The more people I meet, the clearer I can sense people and their energies. I am working with my intuition still, but it only gets stronger at sensing people.  Thank you 2014 for teaching me about my personality type. Thank you for teaching me that no, you don't have a disorder, you're just a unique individual that needs to self reflect and self improve always. Thank you to my friends for always being there for me, letting me cry on their shoulder this year. Letting me rant to them. Thank you for letting me be close to you!

My words to you to close this lengthy blog write up... Never change who you are for anyone.. Remember what your values are, and stick to them. You're not here to make other people happy.

Thank you 2014.

Love always,

Melissa xoxo