Heading Into 2019 - The Pivot Is Strong With This One

With the new year just around the corner, there are so many changes on the horizon. This past year, I was lucky enough to step into so many new roles I would have never thought I could land in. As a musician, I always tend to become a different version of myself on stage, as it helps to counter my social anxiety and feelings of inadequacies and doubts as to whether my story is worth listening to. Having been on a fitness journey for a little over 5 years, I wanted to motivate others and create workouts but had been beaten down by my thoughts as to whether I align with the image of what a leader looks like. I know I'm not your ideal body type for that & I'm not upset when people wrote me
off. They are led by what society has taught them to expect. It's nothing personal.

Over the last few months, I've been trusted with programming and leading workouts for our Friday Stairs Workout Group. Programming the workout is one thing, but being trusted by my peers & people I look up to is ever so much more important to me. It reaffirms that I am capable of doing something that society and self have so often told me I'm not good enough to do.

In the last week of 2018, I also was able to work out at the Navy SEAL Training Center in San Diego, through my friend Tim, who was able to get me into the AO2 (SEAL) Marc A Lee Training Center. Awesome experience, complete with a hyperbaric chamber which is used for High Altitude Simulation Training.

About those changes I alluded to, I have shifted some of my Fitness Goals for the 2019 year, which means changes to how I approach training & more specifically WHERE I train. I have decided to quit my membership at Performance360 after 21 months, effective January 18th at the end of my current cycle. The programming is great. The coaches are amazing; however, the programming doesn't align with or let me grow in ways that I'm looking to grow in 2019. A shift in where I'm heading towards sometimes means stepping back from what you're currently doing and doing something different. This is the first of several changes 2019 is bringing with it.

In the words of my friend, Quitting Evangelist, Dr Lynn Marie Morski, "Quitting is actually what the business world calls, 'Pivoting.'" ... In 2019, you're going to see more Pivoting from me - FOR ME.

First things first, kicking off 2019 with a Road Trip to Sacramento with two of my best friends Tim &
Jessica, which will include dropping in to Anywhere Fit & running with 9Run6 (formerly November Project Sacramento)

Leading DownTown Fridays on Nov 30th

Leading DownTown Fridays on Dec 21st

Road to 50k - Give Me My Ultra Title

Road to 50k BACK ON!!!

So as many of you may know, on October 27th I went out to complete my first 50k at Lake Hodges 50k. Due to some issues with the calculations of the cutoff station, I ended up being cut at 30k. At the finish line, as I was discussing giving it another go in a year or so, my friend Eric of Elevation Culture said something which shifted me towards a forward trajectory. He said "Why wait another year? You're already trained and ready. Get out there now and try it again."

I mentioned that I would signup for the San Diego 50 Trail Marathon, put on my the same organizers, Off Road Pursuits. The race is on January 12th. My goal would be to finish the Full Marathon, run through the finish and then head off to do another few miles getting me to my 50k. The medal doesn't have to say 50k, so long as the Strava does.

The benefits of this race are:
No hard cutoff for the Marathon, so long as you finish before the 50 Milers. Also, it's approximately an 11 to 12hr time limit and it's mostly on the same course (in reverse) as the Lake Hodges 50k, meaning I am already familiar with the course and terrain.

So here we go again - Road to 50k. Except with only 5 weeks to the race, this is really more of a sprint to 50k than a long road. This is more me refusing to wallow in the defeat of a DNF. Failure is only failure if you accept a hard stop & in the story of my life, NO STOPS ARE HARD STOPS.

All it takes is one to call yourself an UltraRunner, right?

San Diego 50 Trail Marathon - January 12th, 2019