Day #1 - Five Miles of Hell

Welcome to my blog. I'm writing to document my road to the ring. I found out on Tuesday that the gym I work at (Willy's Gym) is hosting some boxing and kickboxing fights this summer. After our meeting, my boss, Barbara Niggel (Her Profile), says "Gee, I wish there was a ladies bout on the card, that would be awesome!" If you know me, you know I'm a wise-ass, so the first words out of my mouth were, "I'll fight" ... and not in an excited "I really want to fight" voice but in the "look at me, I'm an idiot" voice. She offered right then and there to train me. I said no because my first instinct is to run away from a challenge of that magnitude, but the more I thought about it, the more the idea seemed like a good one. So I called her up later that day and asked if the offer still stood, so here we are.

Day #1 wasn't bad... it wasn't great, but I'm still alive. She called and told me to do five miles on the treadmill at an incline of three. I haven't done five miles of anything except maybe window shopping since I was a senior in high school. Because I had already done two miles on the AMT (Sort of like an Elliptical) I finished out the last three on the treadmill like she asked me to and let me tell you, they were the hardest three miles I've ever done for a few reasons.

First, I kept trying to tell myself "I am training for a fight". Except I've never stepped inside a ring before let alone across from someone who has every intention of separating my head from my neck, so it's hard to imagine what it is I am working towards. Second, I am all by myself. Nobody is yelling at me, screaming for me to pick up the pace, work harder, don't give up. Just me and that little voice I've always had in my head that says, "Your knees hurt, you have shin splints, you can just do an extra mile tomorrow to make up for it, it's OK to give up now!" That voice is a WICKED JERK. But she's also very convincing, or at least she was until yesterday when I started to ignore her and work through whatever imagined (or real) pain it was I was feeling. Truthfully, I couldn't be more proud of my first five miles, even though it took WAY longer than I wanted it to. But day #1 is in the books and I am one step closer to achieving a number of goals. Go me! :)