When you graduate college you don’t think about all the little things you’ll miss until it’s a year later and you’re reflecting on those days back in college, as the next class is about to walk across their stage. The one thing that I really missed this past year has been free access to a gym. I’m not an athletic person and I have never really committed to any “real” fitness goal other than showing up to a gym once a day. This past year it has been so difficult adjusting to a work schedule, dealing with mentally and emotionally exhausting bumps in the road and finding motivation to schedule my workouts outside of morning yoga. This has been weighing on me for so long so I decided to jump and sign up for a 10k.
The 10k that I decided to sign up for is the Run10Feed10 hosted by Women’s Health and partnerd with FEED Projects. The past two years I’ve been wanting to sign up but I had this idea in my head that it was a goal that I couldn’t possibly reach. This year I decided that is not the case and if I do sign up I will have more than enough time to train in time for the raise in September in NYC. I have written about FEED before but I’ll reintroduce you.
FEED was founded in 2007 by Lauren Bush Lauren in an effort to create a product that would be able to help FEED the world. Each bag or product by FEED has a set amount of meals that will be donated or people that will be fed for a year through the World Food Program(WFP) and Feeding America. In an addition to providing over 87 million meals globally, FEED has also supported medical aid for mothers & their newborns, as well as nutrition programs. FEED is not an organization that only helps other countries, FEED consistently provides meals right here in our own country. With the race entry fee you’ll be providing 10 meals in the city that you signed up to race in.
If you’re interested in buying a new bag I would definitely head over the www.FEEDprojects.com and take a look, there’s a bag for every budget!
Making the decision to run the Run10Feed10 race has only motivated me more to keep up with my training. Food Security and Hunger are causes that I really care about. I’ve seen hunger in America first hand and it’s not okay that in a country of abundance and decadence, there are children and families going to bed with empty stomachs. We feel that it’s okay to question hungry families about their food assistance and decrease it but never stop to question our government officials about the handouts they receive on top of a very generous salary and benefits. I know that not many agree with me but 49.1 million Americans lived in food insecure households, including 33.3 million adults and 15.8 million children in 2013. The food insecurity in this country is only increasing but there are ways you can help. You can sign up for the Run10Feed10, even if you cant make it to a race city, you can do it on your own and still get the limited edition FEED bag. You can donate any left over canned food you have after you have spring cleaned your cabinets or you can click here to find and volunteer at your local food bank.
To get ready for this 10k, I’ve been taking my “training” very seriously. I’m really committed and motivated to run the race in September and to have my family watch me. Everyday Conor and I have been heading to the park to do our run together. I downloaded the 10k app on my iphone to help out and give me a little more structure. I didn’t realize it but the app does push you to go a little further each day, especially if you don’t look ahead at the future workouts. The first few workouts haven’t been challenging but it is still recommended to do them since the program builds on itself. I’m nervous for when the weeks turn into straight 30 minute runs but I’ll work up to them! Conor has been really supportive in this decision and has been consistently running with me everyday as well even though I’m a much slower runner than he is.
So far on my rest days Conor has even been doing couples yoga with me!
If you’re doing a 5 of 10k let me know how you train. Or if you’re a runner I would love to hear some tips on how to keep motivated with running and how to recover after runs.
