About me

I had just finished my first 10k.

Hey, I'm Jessica. I'm a graduate of BYU-I where I majored in Health Science with an emphasis in occupational health & safety. I'm also an intern at McCain foods, a mom, an Etsy store owner and an avid runner. My blog is a documentation of my running because, really, I'm not some superstar athlete and I'm not some hardcore workout junkie either. I'm just like anybody else. I want to show everyone who will listen that you don't have to be extraordinary to do extraordinary things. So here I am, running after my goals and dreams. 

So many times I have heard people say, "I could never run x amount of miles" or "It's just too hard". My favorite is, "Well it's just especially hard for me to run because _______". I admit, running can suck and I wasn't always interested in running. In fact, I lived a pretty sedentary lifestyle and soon, it began to show. I wasn't happy with the way I looked and I was tired of being the fat in-law.

When I first started to run, I could barely get once around the track without having to double over and gasp for air. I sucked. I figured running wasn't really my thing and moved on to the elliptical. 

Then one day, I had a brilliant thought as my husband was forcing me to play a game of Blokus. I hate this game, I'm no good at it, I thought as I was clearly losing. We should play In A Pickle I'm really good at that. Then it hit me. Could this apply to running as well? Maybe if I was good at running, I wouldn't hate it as much. 

I hopped onto a treadmill the next day and realized that where I could only run 1/4 of a mile a month before, I could now run 1 whole mile! I was elated. I had seen improvement and when I could run without feeling like dying, it was actually pretty fun.

At that point, I signed up for a 5k. It was daunting for me to think of running 3.2 miles in one run but I made a bargain with myself: If I could run at least half of it, then I would call it a success. On the day of the race, I finished my 5k running and that day, I was hooked. 

I used to think, How could anyone run a full marathon? That's 26.2 miles strait! It's nuts and has got to be bad for you. Anyone who does those are idiots.

But now? I get it. No one ever wakes up one day from never running before in their life and says, Hey, I'm going to run a marathon. That sounds peachy! Running is all about pushing yourself to the point where you think you can't continue, and then pushing further. It was fun to think of the possibilities! I started off thinking, Well, if I can run 1.5 miles, I can double that and do 3. Then if I can run 3 miles, I can train and do 6! But if I can run 6 miles, it wouldn't be that far of a stretch and run 13 miles (of course this was over a course of a year).

So that's what I'm doing now. As I train for my first half-marathon and push myself, I realize that I can do things that may seem impossible.