Team McManus wakes up with moans and groans expressing how sore we feel! This is how it's going to be until after we run the Bermuda Half Marathon and then the 40th Hyannis Marathon Weekend 10K in February.
Saturday we were caught in a deluge at the end of our run. We wake up at 6am Monday through Wednesday to get in our strength training, runs and for me, cross training time in the gym.
We take ice baths to recover now that we are up to 7 miles in our long run training runs.
I'll be 64 years old in December so one may ask - why are you doing this? Why go through the pain and the rigors of training for a half marathon followed a month later by a 10K as I did in 2016?
I truthfully can't imagine my life any other way!
Yes I've had over 25 surgeries and am a survivor of paralytic polio and trauma that manifested as the diagnosis of Post-Polio Syndrome, a progressive neuromuscular disease by Western medicine standards in December of 2006! Why continue to challenge myself and push myself when it would be a lot easier to sleep in, have coffee and brunch on Saturdays and Sundays (that are dedicated to long runs and cross training at the gym)and kick back and take it easy?
Because I've worked so hard to achieve and experience the gift of the miracle of healing in my life:
After so many years of being physically deconditioned and feeling so defeated in mind, body and soul as a result of so much trauma, it's invigorating and enlivening to experience the soreness and the strength happening in my body. Oh and did I mention too that I love to sweat?!
The more I do...the more I challenge myself ... the more I am sending messages to my body to continue to heal.
I am also sending out a message to the world - of what is possible despite appearances to the contrary and to letting my light shine.
Despite living through some of the most horrific conditions anyone should have to endure, I continue to go the distance with strength and courage enjoying the ride knowing it's supposed to hurt and embracing the pain and the journey! What am I going to "save this body" for anyway? Life is not meant to be a journey to the grave....it's meant to be a daring and wonderful adventure or nothing at all!
Go the distance with strength and courage!
~Mary
Be sure to visit my website by following this link.
My books are available on Amazon.
Feel the Heal: An Anthology of Poems to Heal Your Life
Coming Home: A Memoir of Healing Hope and Possibility that chronicles the first 7 years of my healing journey:
And my latest and greatest book - Going the Distance: The Power of Endurance (With a Foreword by Jacqueline Hansen):
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