Motivation Monday: The “seven” edition

This week, I’m finding motivation in my own successes—and, of course, in my friends’ successes. I noticed a “seven” theme, so I’m going with it:

Seven thousand meters—roughly the equivalent of 4.4 miles, or the distance of the Great Chesapeake Bay Bridge Swim. It’s also the distance I swam at the Wilson Aquatic Center on Sunday to prepare for the Bay Bridge Swim on June 12. Swimming to Hemingway’s, a blog dedicated to Bay Bridge Swim training, suggests a workout called “The Hemingway,” which consists of a 1,000 followed by three 2,000s to get to 7K, and that’s roughly what I did on Sunday: 3X2,000 meters, then 2X500. The last two were to prepare me mentally for feeling like I *should* be done at the end of the bridge, but still having to swim several hundred meters to shore. In short, the swim felt great, and brought me to 25K for the month in the  50K in May challenge. I felt so great, in fact, that I didn’t even have to resort to singing Nicki Minaj and Eminem lyrics to myself the last few thousand meters.

Seven miles, or the distance I ran last Thursday—a major post-ACL distance PR, and a major confidence booster ahead of the Bolder Boulder 10K, which Steve and I are running to raise money for the American Cancer Society on behalf of Steve’s mom. I got to seven miles courtesy of reverting to my “normal” Tuesday-Thursday routine of running to Pacers Silver Spring, doing our 5-ish mile group run, then running home. I jogged it with some of my favorite running buddies, and had a lovely, chatty time. It was good for my heart. It was so-so for my knee, which leads me to …

Seventy-million ice packs. I’m so intensely sick of these, and have needed a seemingly endless supply of them since completing the above. That’s all.

Seven pints of blueberries. Long swims, like long runs, do funky things to my metabolism. I’m hungry constantly, and in an effort to make sure my wetsuit still fits in June, I’m filling up on the awesome blueberries on sale at Giant. I tried counting the number of pints I’ve eaten over the past three or four days, and it did, indeed come to seven. (Editor’s note: I actually just stopped counting at seven, which is the same thing, right?). This included cinnamon-berry quinoa, shown below, before my long swim.

70.3, the number of miles Katie at Run This Amazing Day covered in the Kinetic Half Ironman last weekend. I’m way more impressed and motivated by gutsy performances than fast ones (whatever “fast” means), and the fact that Katie trained for this race through injuries and finished the run on fumes is simply astounding to me.

Five to seven weeks: The number of weeks of radiation my best friend Alexis is getting ready to start, now that her chemo is complete. She says chemo left her feeling like she had been hit by a truck. You know what she does as soon as she feels better again? She runs. Read her description of getting back on her feet—literally—here, and remind yourself of it next time you need to infuse your daily run with some gratitude.

What’s motivating you this week?