Kerri On Down The Road

When you think of the word "challenge" what comes to mind? Struggles, hard work, negative thinking, set backs....not many positive descriptions tend to pop up right away.  What if we reframe our thinking around what challenges in our lives actually are, and instead of letting the challenge define us, we let our reaction and learning from the challenge shape who we are becoming? Earlier this year I suffered a running injury, which resulted in my needing to examine some issues in my life.  What led to the injury was a simple matter of over training as I tried to compensate and avoid admitting and exploring some issues in my personal life that I just didn't want to deal with.  Numbing myself through extensive activity, until my body finally decided that if I wasn't going to slow down and figure things out, it was going to start that process for me.  The injury was severe enough to force me to stop running all together for a period of about six (long) weeks, and as a si...

Have you ever had that feeling of starting out fast?  And the reason - there's somewhere you want to get to either because you have. been working hard to achieve an outcome, you are fueled by adrenaline or you just want what you are going through currently to be over.  When this happens, how long are you able to maintain that pace?  Do you finish as strong as you started? On the run today, I noticed that my pace was unintentionally fast and was not something I had planned or expected.  Of course I felt pleased by this bump up in speed, and thought that I should try to maintain it. Guess what happened....I got slower.  I started to force it, my gait was off, it felt wrong and my pace slowed.  As soon as I noticed this shift I let up on that intention to go faster, and things got right back to where they had been in the first place. The other thing I noticed was that the distance seemed to go more slowly, pauses were further apart.  I took a wrong tur...

48 And Feeling Great! As my birthday rolls around, I can't help but reflect on the past year.  Metaphorically speaking it has been a marathon of sorts.  Long, slow and steady, always putting one foot in front of the other and keeping the end goal in mind and heart.  Unlike a true marathon, there has been no clear-cut and outlined plan for success.  No set schedule of exactly what to do and when to try and ensure success.  Instead it has been a year of taking chances, opening up, being vulnerable and also being gentle and understanding.  Of learning to trust myself, my instincts and my ability to innately know what i needed and not needed as I moved ahead.  Often this progression felt like it required a lot of momentum and forward motion, when in reality it was the opposite.  Time, space and stillness were often required so the path ahead could come into clearer focus.  Illuminated from within and bathed in a light generated by self love, pat...

Since I started to embark on my marathon training, my running practice has changed, for the better. One of the big changes has been to not map out my routes.  I do have a rough idea of some distances, and between that knowledge and allowing my watch to let me know how far I've gone it's been working well.  Having this freedom has allowed me to enjoy new scenery and make each run a little different.  On a recent run, I realized that I had a hillier route than normal, and the hilliest since I was injured....and that got me thinking.  My hamstring pull happened in January, which was at least six months ago.  It was a pretty bad pull, and caused me to pull out of two races and not run for a good six weeks, but I have been back at it for nearly three months now.  So when was I going to stop identifying myself as having been injured?  Let go of that persona, as it is no longer relevant and does not reflect who I am today.  A healthy an strong runner. ...

This morning as I walked through the subway station, I noticed a young girl in light-up sneakers and a cute summer dress who was walking with her mom.  She was having a great morning as evidenced by her giggles and bounciness.  She stopped walking at one point and just started to twirl around and I was struck by her unbridled happiness.  When was the last time that you allowed yourself to feel an emotion fully, whether it be happiness or sadness, anger or frustration?  And not only feel it but express it fully, not direct the feelings towards someone or something else, just express how you are truly feeling and what you are experiencing that in the moment? To me it feels like we have an unspoken band of emotion and that is where it is "safe" and "ok" to feel things.  We tend to exist within this limited space where it is neither too happy nor too sad, too emotional or too raw.  Over the past few months I have definitely had moments that have been both very...

It's funny how quickly you can become accustomed to change and to a certain pace of change.  When I look at the past six months of my life and if I really stop and think about all that has taken place, events that I have had control over and those which I have not, it is pretty amazing and honestly a little overwhelming.  Being in the middle of all of this change and movement, growth and exploration, it is easy to lose sight of how much work has taken place and the pace at which these changes have occurred.  By losing perspective around that, I feel like I've simply become accustomed to this fast pace of change and development, and have almost become addicted to it.  To the feeling of movement and coming into myself after so long without that direction or sense of self.  Finally seeing and more importantly accepting myself has truly been something I never really put much thought towards before, and now that I've started I almost feel like a day without some sort...

As the days and weeks progress, I have started to make better decisions around self care when it comes to physical activity.  I am finally realizing that all too often I had been pushing myself, always striving to do more with less, thinking that it was some type of achievement to do so much while running on empty.  What I now know is that I am stronger and perform much better when I am properly fueled and rested, and there is a reason behind what I am doing.  Not activity for the sake of always being on the go and being busy.  Activity because it is a part of a greater plan, or because it brings happiness or is going to serve me and my body in some other way.  All too often I used being busy to escape feelings that I didn't want to experience.  Instead of numbing through alcohol, drugs or other vices, I chose the "healthy" option of always being active.  And as a result of this practice, I suffered repetitive injuries and ongoing exhaustion.  I ...