Inspiration

For the next 30 days, I will be participating in the WEGO Health Activist Writer's Month Challenge by blogging about a predetermined topic each morning.  Please visit http://blog.wegohealth.com to learn more - and please check back each evening for your regularly scheduled programming.

As many of you know, I love, love, love quotes and find that they can better express what I am feeling, thinking, etc.  In addition, I tend to use quotes as a source of inspiration and motivation, especially regarding exercise and fitness.

And, I am indelibly grateful to Pinterest for allowing me to keep all of those stirring sentiments in one place.  :)

Lately, many of my inspiring fitness quotes have had to do with running.  For example:

Source

In my Bible (The Nonrunner's Marathon Guide for Women), Dawn Dais chronicles her training for the Honolulu Marathon with the Train to End Stroke program.  She ran because her beloved grandfather suffered a massive stroke, and at one point in the book, she talks about how she was running for him just like he would - if he could - run for her.  She also says,

As I sat at the informational meeting and watched three people stand up when they asked if anyone training was a stroke survivor, I realized that there was no turning back.  These people have trouble walking; some have partial paralysis of half their bodies.  Some of them are here to train to walk a marathon.  These people, like my grandfather once did, exert more effort getting dressed in the morning than I, an able-bodied person, do in an entire week.  I owe it to them - and to my grandfather, and mostly to myself - to get off my ass and use this body I take for granted.  And in doing so, I'll show my admiration and respect for those stroke survivors who are training alongside me.

Like Dawn, I know that I am very blessed to have the abilities that I do, even if those are abilities that I take for granted every single day.  And so I run.  After all:

When that day comes when I can no longer run, when I can no longer jump, when I can no longer train, when I can no longer walk, I will want to see people running.  And I will want to smile because of it.

I came across yet another quote that rang true with me as I was surfing Pinterest for the millionth time:

As many of you know, last winter I decided that I was going to run a marathon.  Because (as I have mentioned before) I hated cross country in high school and because the farthest I had run was a 5k, everyone was shocked - myself included.

However, I wholeheartedly believed in the mission and goal of See-Us Run Des Moines, I had seen the amazingly positive effects it had had on the previous year's participants, and I knew my own determination: once I set my mind to something, I will accomplish it (often, regardless of how stupid that may be).

Twenty-six point two miles is, however, daunting.  And as our mileage began creeping up and up and up, I continued to doubt my abilities: I can't even run four miles without walking - how am I supposed to run 26.2?!  But, I persevered.

And on race day, despite raging tendonitis in my foot and in my hamstring, I ran.  While I was physically unable to complete the full marathon due to those injuries, I ran (stupidly) the half marathon.

Because I started that race, I was undoubtedly going to finish.  And like John Bingham said, the miracle wasn't that I crossed that finish line, but that I had the courage to take those first steps.

And I am indelibly grateful that I did.