Blog Post 6

• Life skills
• organization
• determination
• time management
• Overcoming adversity
• achieving a goal

"They Say, I Say"

Ashley Hamilton

Period 6

3-19-17

“They Say, I Say” One-Pager

If you were to ever say, “Wow, I’m bored! Maybe I should go run or train for a half marathon?!”, many people would think you are out of your mind and would think why would you want to put yourself through all that torture?! Many runners answers would be, “Why not?” If you don't challenge yourself you’re never going to get better. For me, I have always loved running, in the summer I go on runs on the trail if it is nice out or in the winter I will run on the treadmill in my basement. Still, many people would think I am crazy for running for fun, but I enjoy it so I continue to do it. If I was asked the question, “Why would I put myself through all of the torture?” I think I would answer the same as any other runner, because I like to do it. No one goes into training for races or signs up for races because they want to torture themselves for the next 12 or so weeks.

In my article,”60 Hours of Hell: The Story of the Barkley Marathons” by Madison Kahn, it talks about what the Barkley Marathons are about and has comment from the creator and previous runners about what they think about the race and why they do it. If you couldn't already tell by the title of the article “60 Hours of Hell….Barkley Marathons”, but the race is “the most brutal race on earth”, people from all over the world come and compete in it. The creator himself,Gary “Laz” Cantrell, stated that the Barkley Marathons it “the race that eats the young.” Also, the name as an “s” at the end of marathon because it is not just one marathon you have to run, you have to run five marathons in  a 60-hour time period to be considered a finisher. In 2013, only 14 people had ever finished the Barkley Marathons. Like mentioned before, you don't do anything to be torturous to you, you do it because its fun and its a challenge. The article ”60 Hours of Hell: The Story of the Barkley Marathons”, Laz stats, “It takes a different kind of mentality to do something that no matter how well you’ve prepared, you’ll probably fail at.” Of course, you can’t go in there thinking like that though. If you really want to do something, go out, find out how to do it, and try your best. That is what you have to do at the Barkley Marathons, and you also have to do that even to register for race. A Two-time Barkley Competitor, Beverly Abbs stated, “There’s an email listserv for the Barkley…..the veterans will just lie. For a virgin, half of getting to the start line is working through the lies.” There is no website for registration, you basically have to figure it out yourself, just like how you have figure out the paths and trails of the course all by yourself.

In my opinion, yes, I agree that if you are going to take on a challenge you need to have the right mentality to do it. You don't ever wont to go into anything thinking you are going to fail, if you do that, you will never succeed. No matter how hard the challenge is, even if it;s the Barkley Marathons, you should only be doing it if you want to take on the challenge and have the passion and mentality to pursue the training to accomplish your goal. Even if you come up short, you can still say you did it for a reason, to give yourself a challenge. If you accomplish your goal, then you have proved to yourself if you put your heart and mind to something you can achieve it.

Field Work/Mentor

Field work for my 20 Time project would running, a lot lol. But right now for me, that is something I am still unable to do. I have been in physical therapy for a month or two now and things have been going very well. I have just been released to start light practice and some light jogging (baby steps!) So right now for my field work I have been slowly strengthening my knee and getting it back to full strength so I can do everything at 100 percent again like go on runs, go biking, and play softball. I think that field work was obviously the better route for me is because in going this way I could also talk to my trainers about good ways of getting myself back into good running shape and how slow to start. I also have gotten good information on a nutritional diet I could go on to help stay in good runners shape, which would also help with staying in shape for softball.