WELOME to Fit Five Friday with with your FIVE amazing hosts – me, Darlene -My First 5K and More, Michele – Running With Attitude, Jenn – Runs with Pugs, and Zenaida – The Running Teacher ! 

Every month Marcia opens the runfessional – a place to let it all out and cleanse your soles; if you are needing to release some sweaty secrets or just want to get things off your chest, here’s the place to do it!  AND this is your LAST CHANCE this year! So jump on in and let it alllllll out.

If it’s not on Strava, did you even do it?

The first thing I want to runfess is: I honestly wasn’t bothered at all with a mileage goal this year. At some point however I did enter a goal on Strava of 550KM’s which is pretty low compared to previous years. I just checked my stats and it says I’ve done 723.5 KM’s. What the what? And there may or may not be a couple added before midnight on the 31st.

Part of me really, really wanted to do more races

But I runfess I was not feeling that confident at all this year. I set a goal of 5 races, and I managed 4. There were a couple that were really mentally challenging and one I decided to not even show up to at all. I runfess, I”ve lost a LOT of confidence in general, thanks to not feeling very well mentally and physically, having constant pain and not being able to lose any weight (which I do believe would help a bit).

Next Year is going to be different

I runfess I signed up for the Paris Marathon (to end my marathon ‘career’ 10 in 10) but I recently went to the orthopedic surgeon and he 100% recommended I get both of my big toes fused to put an end to the pain once and for all. So I have my first surgery scheduled for February 11th. That means there will not be a whole lot of running next year, at least not in the first half.

Fitness will be the priority

I runfess that it’s probably going to be hard to not regularly go for a run. But I’m going to fully focus on my fitness again – this has really fallen by the wayside pretty much since I started at the Toxic Job. Ron and I are back at his favorite gym again, my friend Vincent as well, and Vinny and I will be doing RPM together with our favorite instructor Anne. We’ve already been once and it was so great being back

I’m still here

I runfess that I’ve felt really disconnected because of all the challenges and personally feeling like I don’t belong (which is rubbish, I know). But I do absolutely recognize what an amazing community we have here. I am committing to be more present and reconnecting with everyone again. I realize now I can just be me and share and support just like everyone else. So maybe I’m not running thousands of miles or doing all the events but that’s not the be all and end all.

What do you want to runfess before the year is over?

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