Finding My Happiness
I had always been a really chubby girl throughout my whole life. I was never into sports, especially not running. At the end of my 8th grade year I decided to embark my journey on loosing weight. I knew I had to eat healthy and had to exercise. Eating healthy wasn't my problem it was figuring out what I was going to do for excercise. I was going into high school so I figured if I joined a sport it would help me lose weight. I was not athletic at all so sports that involved some type of throwing or kicking were a no to me. My friend Rachel convinced me to do XC summer training with her and I thought " why not. " During that summer '16 I went to every workout, they were really hard but I kept pushing because I knew it was going to help me get healthier. So all summer I did these workouts with no intention on joining the team and doing it because I liked it.
Fall came around and so did my freshmen year of high school. I was now becoming very healthy and I thought why not just keep running. So I joined the XC team. The first weeks were very hard for me but I didn't want to give up. As weeks went by I started to realize that I actually enjoyed going to practices after school and going on long runs. Before I knew it I was running not because " I wanted to be healthy " but because " I liked it. " I realized how much I loved my team and how much I loved racing. Running became my passion. I became so intrigued with it my non runner friends would always tell me " laura you talk too much about running. "
I am very proud of how far I've come. I started my XC season with a 28 minute 5k and ended with a 22 min. I also continued running and did indoor and outdoor tracks. Which really helped me, I went from a 7:50 min mile ( cross season ) and ended up with a 5:50 mile. But most importantly I found true happiness. I'm now very confident in my own body and I feel very healthy. Running makes me feel strong and fearless. I'm glad to have found a love in running that at the beginning of last year I would've never imagined.
- @Lauraabreu211 ( Laura Abreu )
