Fitness is Bliss

"Bliss: the emotional state characterized by perfect happiness" 

Fitness is bliss. It is simple but true. That moment when you are putting in hard work but feeling free. The moment you are overwhelmed by so much positivity that you push yourself further. The moment when you realize you never thought you could make it to this point. You feel invincible. You feel free and you know that it is all because of the sweat and hard work that you put in.

Sometimes you can’t describe it, but you feel it throughout every inch of your body. That bliss is the feeling that keeps you coming back for more.

What’s my bliss?

Running.

Running takes me places I never knew existed and it has helped me to learn things deep within myself. I run 6 days a week and fall in love with it more each day.

Fitness wasn’t always bliss

As a child I detested physical activity. I would cry when my kindergarten teacher said it was time for gym class. I wasn’t coordinated or fast and I was too shy to play on any team. I didn’t play sports as a child mostly because the mere thought of running made me uneasy. I hated track and field day at school. Track and field day was both humiliating and exhausting. I wanted to dance, not run. What if I finished last? This fear is the only thing that propelled my little legs down the 100m stretch. Blissful is the opposite of what I felt during those days.

Off I went to high school where an all-girls gym class with a new best friend introduced me to the love of sport. Dannel was one of the most athlete girls I had ever met and I had no choice but to have fun as her as my gym partner. Soon enough I found myself playing on a soccer team with her that summer and the girls flag football team that fall. I was hooked. Sports were in fact fun.

 I feel in love with running through a soccer injury. I could no longer dance or play sports but I could run. I liked it but was happy to return to “real” sports once I finished. I was back to soccer. That was pretty much the end of my fitness journey as I headed off to college.

Each summer running generally took me running along the water front of Lake Simcoe, in the very small town of Innisfil, Ontario. I would run for 20 minutes taking in the beauty of the lake. That is where my love affair began.

Eventually after returning home from my third year of school running suddenly became more important. Through the encouragement of my new friend Nat (the definition of a real runner as far as I was concerned) I tried to take my running further. She encouraged me to come run for the college cross country team, even though I was slow as could be. Nat insisted that it didn’t matter, it was all for fun and running was a very personal thing. I began to take my running more seriously.

I found myself slowly increasing the length of my runs and eventually working up to 50 minute run. After my first 50minute run I began to feel overwhelmingly blissful, it was the highest runners high I had ever reached. The next week I headed off to college in hopes of running with the college team.

(I will share my college running experience later)

Through this blog I hope to give and receive support to all kinds of people who strive to become fitter than they ever imagined. I could not have become a runner without the support from my friends (both old and new) along the way.

Please join me in my running journey as I search for further bliss <3

Fitness is Bliss.

What is Fitness to YOU?