Goal Digger 2016: She's Going The Distance

What do these items have in common? Here's a hint: #goaldigger2016 #ARCgoaldigger2016 #healthfitness #exercisemotivation

I was verbally motivating myself to only go 1/2 a mile when I see a deer in the middle of the street. A car passes by me, shining his headlights on the deer. Nope, not a deer. It's a rogue German Shepard and it starts charging at me. The car drives off. 

"It's not my dog, don't leave me!" 

I tear off my glove and pull the pink cartridge of pepper spray from underneath my reflective vest and out of the jacket pocket. This wild ass animal is still coming after me. I stutter to hold my ground. It is running after me! It's beast toenails scrape the asphalt as it charges towards me, growling. 

The pepper spray is ready and aimed toward the animal when I lose it. I panic. I've seen the police training videos where German Shepards tear apart men dressed in protective sumo wrestler gear. I have an imaginary flash of my gizzard ripped out as I lay dead on the side of the road in a CSI Atoka crime scene. 

Instead of being the next murder victim, I raise my arms in the air. I scream like a Banshee. The German Shepard retreats as I run the opposite direction. 

I haven't run this far since 2007, when I ran exclusively on a treadmill, then herniated a disc in my spine, pinched my sciatic nerve, and lost all feeling from my hip to my toes in my left leg. I couldn't feel cold. I didn't know if I was bleeding. I couldn't balance on it. I couldn't wear closed shoes because I couldn't tell if they were too tight. There was nothing there. I had to go to months of physical therapy to get the feeling back and relearn to walk without dragging my leg like Quasimodo. 

Tonight, to get away from the dog, because I wanted to do it for that 2007 me, and for me today I kept pushing to go further. Thanks to the spike in adrenaline, however looking like a turtle swimming through peanut butter, I jogged just over 1.1 miles!  

Yep, I am pretty damn motivated and knocking goals out #onemileatatime!