Success, Greatness, Satisfaction, and Happiness

I’m by no means the definition an elite runner. In the world of recreational running, also known as hobby jogging, I’m pretty average. My 1 Mile PR is 6:00, and my 5K PR is 20:37. My current running goal is to get healthy, that goal is followed by the goal to get back to roughly that level of fitness, and from there, I can work on running sub-6 and sub-20.

But I still consider myself to be successful. Success is less of a singular event, and more of a way of life; and the way to live a successful life is to work hard consistently. In the world of running, success doesn't equate with winning, or setting records, or even being the best. Success is work. Success is a process. Success is improvement. Success is addicting. And it doesn't have to be improving on your times, or improving how hard the running feels. It’s the improvement of effort. You are successful as long as you make it your life and as long as you give maximum effort.

I also believe I can achieve greatness. I believe that I am great now, but I know that my future is yet brighter than today and today was brighter than yesterday. Why? Because as soon as you resign yourself to not achieving greatness, you fail. And greatness doesn't mean money, or power, or anything of those tangible things. Greatness can't be calculated. It can't be measured. It can only be admired. Be respected. Greatness awaits you.

Now while I believe that I’m successful, and I believe I’m great. I’m not even remotely satisfied. You should never be satisfied. To be satisfied is to admit that you are weak. That you are inferior. You should always want to go faster, go harder, and go farther. If you commit yourself to success and dream of greatness, then you will never be satisfied, as your continued improvement will push you continue to give maximal effort. I will only be satisfied when I’m done.

Don’t confuse satisfaction and happiness though. I’m very happy. Even injured, I’m happy. If I was healthy tomorrow morning, I imagine I’d have a difficult time breaking 7 minutes in the mile. After all, I was maybe in 6:45 shape 2 weeks ago and I haven’t run since. And if I ran a 5k, I imagine it would be 24:xx. But I’m still happy, because I know that I had been putting in solid consistent work, and that these injuries are just a temporary setback. You can be unsatisfied while being happy. The two aren't synonymous.

Good luck in all your training, and may you live success, discover greatness, and enjoy happiness!

Made of Glass

I'm realizing that I'm made of glass. I recovered from that high ankle sprain easy enough. I recovered from my groin sprain in just a day or two more. But now a major injury has popped up; sciatic nerve pain in my right leg, the same leg those soccer injuries happened in.

I don't think it's sciatica because I don't feel any pain in my back. My side and bottom of my glute are extremely tight and I get pain shooting down my right leg through my calf, with my outer hamstring area being extremely tight. I've found a few stretches that help loosen it, but it can be hard to walk at times, let alone run.

I normally wouldn't be too concerned by this, though it would be disappointing no doubt, but I ship to basic training in about 17 days, so I don't have time for this kind of setback. If it doesn't improve this week, I have to figure out what I'm going to do for drill first. If I had to base my decision off my current condition, I'd delay my ship further into the summer, but that's if I'm healed by then.

So that's it, I've decided I'm the Glass Man. In the future, I'm going to spend a lot more time working on injury prevention and running specific ancillary work to strengthen my body. While I'm a little disheartened now from all the injuries I've gone through over this past year, I'm confident that when I do get healthy, I'll quickly improve just by getting in some consistent training.

P.S. I hope everyone enjoyed watching an exciting Boston Marathon this morning; what a great race!

Progress and My Running Bucket List

Okay, so I've made some progress from the weekend. High ankle sprain is gone, pulled groin muscle seems to be relaxing, but now I've got a pinched nerve under my hamstring. Doesn't hurt when running, just when I sit and stand in certain positions. Hopefully that goes away.

Well I took Sunday off, icing my leg some more, but decided that I should get back to it on Monday. I began by doing some stretching inspired by Coach Jay Johnson, which seemed to loosen me up pretty good. Later in the afternoon, I was able to stationary bike for 35 minutes, do elliptical for 20 minutes, and did a 3.5 mile easy run. It felt awesome.

Tuesday I was too drained from classes, I should have ran in the morning, but coffee sounded better. Oops. Got up early Wednesday and got after it though with a broken tempo, doing 5 minutes on with 75 seconds off, for a total of 26 minutes. Pretty good workout with the rising heat outside. A couple of hours after dinner I went to the gym and did 25 minutes on the elliptical, increasing from about 65 to 85% of my maximum heart rate during the workout.

The plan is to wake up early tomorrow morning to get a long workout of running, biking, elliptical, and then ancillary work in, but we'll see how that goes.

I wanted to give you my running bucket list, as it's the hot topic to post about in the running world.

• Set new personal records in the Mile and the 5k, my current pr's are 6:00 and 20:37, I'm hoping for a sub 20 5k this Fall.
• Establish pr's in the 2 Mile and 10k, I'll get a 2 Mile from Basic Training, but I'm not sure when I'd move up and do a 10k
• Compete in another cross country race. I'm not worried about time, since all courses are different, but I'd like to run one this Fall, hopefully with some good training in my legs as opposed to the previous 2 times.
• Win another race. I won a 2.8 mile race when I was sick once, pretty cruddy time but no competition.  But I want to win a more competitive race. I think this is a long term goal.
• Become a coach, even a free one for one athlete. It would be awesome to apply the training techniques I've learned about and use them on an athlete and coach them to success.

What are some things on your bucket list, running or not?

Speaking of those Failures

I took Thursday and Friday off from running or any kind of working out. Partially to rest my IT band, partially because the weather was horrible here in Eastern NC. So today, with beautiful weather out, my friend suggested playing some soccer outside, and I thought that'd be a great start to my afternoon, followed by an easy run and some strides.

Then I rolled my ankle in a hole on the pitch. I was able to keep playing but when we got back, I wasn't able to run without feeling some pain. And as the afternoon progressed, it's gotten tighter. So icing and elevating has been the name of the game. Pretty frustrating, seeing as how my IT band is feeling great today.

I'll see how it feels in the morning, but I doubt I'll be able to run on it. Maybe I'll get lucky and be able to cross train, but that doesn't sound as appealing. Just another adventure in failure.

Check back in a few days, hopefully I'll not only be able to talk about some positive running news, but also give you guys my running bucket list.

An Introduction

As you are reading these words, you have begun the painstaking and fruitless event of reading things that I deem worthy of writing about. Mostly, I want to write about running, but I'm sure to include plenty of stories about the military and college life, maybe even some food related posts.

 I should probably warn you that I have strong opinions. You're probably not going to like some of them. I couldn't care less. But I would like you to know what's going on when we get serious. And I'd rather you have an opinion than just be a wandering sheep. Here's to us becoming less apathetic together.

In regards to the title; It came to me in a flash and sounded fancy, but I think it's aptly named. Some of the greatest people had numerous failures before they were ever successful, and realizing that is a positive, I think.

To close, I didn't run today. My IT band is sore and the weather is disgusting, hopefully some more stretching will do me good. But as I come back from my consistent string of injuries, I did a 2 Mile tempo on Monday at 12km race pace, did a 4.6 mile long run Tuesday night just faster than marathon pace, and did 3.4 miles at recovery pace yesterday.

Let's see where this goes.