Sunday, October 7, 2012

Some Encouragement

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Wow. Has it been awhile! It's been some time since I've written on here, I'll admit I've just been being lazy and avoid anything remotely school related. Yes- that means taking time out of my day to write, even to simply blog. Not for any reason besides wanting to enjoy my vacation as much as I can. Some good that did me though, I ended up being swamped with Marine things. So how did my PFT (or rather partial PFT) go? It actually wasn't too bad, I was the only girl, but despite that I was able to hold my own just fine. I recently got done with another PFT (this time run included and I wasn't the only girl!). I'm happy to report that I maxed out on both the flex arm hang and got 99 sit ups- just 1 away! Talk about embarrassing. I got a black shirt though. My brother was quite upset, as he had been wanting the black but ended up getting the blue shirt. I'm not exactly sure how it works, I guess if you don't max out you get a blue shirt and if you do they give you the black (of course, they don't have girl sizes so I need to have it fitted). As for the run, well that didn't go quite as well as I had hoped. Early on I ended up getting this massive side stitch, refusing to completely stop, I slowed down and dug my hand into my side trying to push the pain out. Eventually it either went numb, or just faded away. Regardless, I'm sure I was a sight for sore eyes. My 3-mile run time was 28:39. Horrible. I know I can do better. I'm chalking it up to my injury. I actually didn't feel ready to run, seeing as how I've been gradually re-increasing my mileage (I had to stop running for a complete month). After the PFT I could feel my muscles tightening. The old injury was sore the next day and though that leg was completely stiff, I felt no pain when I walked. A good sign. I think I may actually be fully healed this time! The captain told all of us that one way to improve our time is to just get out there and run 30 minutes every other day, later do some intervals. That Friday though, he told me to only do 20 minutes. I'm underweight, and need to gain weight so I don't get disqualified. They basically talked to me for over 30 minutes on my eating habits. I just have a high metabolism. And I eat healthy. It's not my fault. But 10 pounds I need to gain, so 10 pounds I will gain. The good news though, was that the captain did say he was confident I'd get selected and that I wouldn't be there with him talking to me like that if he wasn't  That made me feel better. I've been worried about it. I mean, I can't even push the tiny 152 back into her spot, how in the world am I going to be able to get through training?

"You're one tiny girl. But you're tough."

The challenge has officially been accepted. The only thing that will stop me is something that will be out of my control. Other than that, I refuse to back down. I've watched this process slowly consume me. Each day I want it more, I work harder, I push myself further. Each day I realize this feels right, this is where I need to be. And for every person who tells me I can't do it, or bashes on this process just gives me the encouragement and motivation to prove them wrong. Because there is nothing I enjoy more than proving people wrong.

2 comments:

The Iceman said...

From experience, I've found that when dealing with leg injuries, swimming always helped me ease back into running and doing ruck runs eventually. Just doing lengths of the pool over and over again helped build my endurance back up while giving me a slight full-body workout.

Ella said...

Good to know! Next time I get injured I'll look into that.