I have discovered something about myself: I am exceptional at talking myself out of my own goals.

One of my favorite excuses to make for myself is my exercise induced asthma. One of my favorite quick calorie busting workouts is a good run. Let me rephrase that. I hate to run, but I love how great of a workout running is. From my teenage years, attempting to run in P.E. had me panting like a 90 year old with emphysema, my face turning beet red and my sides burning with in just a few minutes. My senior year coach taught me to count the seconds breathing in and out, helping to regulate my breathing. This started me on the right path and it’s a trick I still use today when I feel like my lungs are burning from the inside out.

So when breathing gets tough when I’m very sloooowly jogging up the slightest incline, I tell myself it’s the asthma, and start walking; walk up, run down. Inhalers never help much. So yesterday, I decide before my run – or let’s be real, my jog, that I WILL continue jogging up the incline no matter how slow I need to go. And boy, did I go slow, but I did it gosh darnit! I jogged a crawling average 14.39 min mile pace for three miles, landing more on the ball of my feet on the up and counting my breath, two seconds in, three seconds out over, and over, and over again.

I have run very little since breaking my neck (hey look, another excuse!), so running straight through one mile would be an accomplishment – but three? That felt fan-freakin-tastic! The last 1/2 mile I felt like dead weight, and I rationalized that I would just run the three miles, not the extra quarter coming down our road. But when I got to the turn, my determination carried me the rest of the way. When I stumbled through the door, I was elated. It was a victory, and a very motivating one at that. Not so much in that I ran the three miles nonstop, but rather because I had set a limit for myself in the past; the asthma would not let me run up hill, or I haven’t run much lately so I’ll just start with one mile non-stop.

That’s my new goal; to push myself in a workout to the point when I need to stop or slow down, and then keep pushing through just another minute, or mile, or rep.

All the excuses, all the boundaries we set for ourselves, are breakable.