Bad Ass
The term gets thrown around a lot in the running community.   Rightly so because there are so many out there.  

That being said….. What if there is not one size shoe fits all for being a bad ass.

You finish a 100 mile challenge – Definitely a Bad Ass

You finish a 50 mile challenge – Defineitly a Bad Ass

You finish a 50K – Definitly a Bad Ass

You finish a Marathon – still definitely a Bad Ass

You finish a Half Marathon – Go you Bad Ass runner

You finish a 5K –  Look at your bad ass self

What about if you don’t do these things but still get up every day deciding to be the best version of you? What if just pushing yourself forward is more than enough?   Does that count?

You bet your Bad Ass self it does!!   There is no test to become a Bad Ass.   There is no standard.   Each person decides for themselves. As I’ve said before, what is easy for one person is a challenge for someone else. What is a challenge for one person might be impossible for another. It goes both ways. What is hard for one person is easy for another. Unless you are a top of the line competitive athlete, there is always someone better, faster, fitter than you. There is probably someone who would also love to be where you are too.

Here is another thing…….. These things change over time. What was once hard may become easy. What was once easy may become hard again. The ups and down of life. This is why you need to live, train, and appreciate where you are in life and your training.

Today I finished my Couch to 5K training. I did my 5K on a treadmill. Where a 5K was once easy, it is now hard but not impossible. Someone said to me today that you haven’t been a Couch person for a while and while they are right, this was right for me. It was good to go back to the beginning. To remember that it is easy to get out of tune with yourself and take stock again. I realized that I need to keep my levels up to a certain point, that maybe speed and daily runs aren’t in my best interest right now. That I can do this. This is what this training has done for me. It has allowed me to reassess where I am, what I can do, and start to think about where I want to go.

Looking forward is so much better than looking backwards. Yes, I’ve realized that for now I am much slower than I used to be. Yes, I am at a point where I’m not sure if I would be comfortable running with others because I would feel like I would be slowing them down. Yes, I am lucky that I can do what I can do. There are others with Hypoparathyroidism that would LOVE to do the things that I can do. I can’t complain. What I can do is live where I am. Run where I am and once again start to enjoy the wind in my face.

Where are you?