The Buck Stops Here

This installment has been a long time coming; three weeks in fact. In that amount of time I ran my first of three half marathons for the year (Lincoln), put in tons of hours at work immediately following that weekend, and, to put it bluntly, I lost my motivation and focus.

The excuses? There's plenty. The reasons? Are there really any reasons? Not really. It's becoming increasingly difficult for me to figure out the difference between reason and excuse. I can blame sheer exhaustion for a lot of my lack of motivation and focus, but in the end, it comes down to me.

This lack of motivation and focus has led to poor judgement, as it usually does with everybody. I was (and still am) on the quest for the perfect bavarian filled chocolate bismarck. I've been eating TONS of junk food and fast food, and spent way too much money while doing it; $35 in the past 2 weeks alone, and gained a few pounds in the process. I knew that was wrong, but I continued to do it, and in the process, Fat Connie crept from the back of my mind to the front of my mind.

So? Here's what's "So". The Buck Stops Here. I can CHANGE this and turn it into a POSITIVE.

I'm human. I should be allowed to make mistakes and fall off the wagon, but if I continue to do that, I'll let Fat Connie win the war. That's NOT about to happen. This lack of motivation and focus has also spurred me to get BACK on the wagon. During this past week I have started running and tracking my food intake again, and am focusing on my next half marathon (Buffalo County Stampede) on June 10th.

Today I watched the French Open first round match between #111 world ranked Virginnie Serrano and #5 world ranked Serena Williams. As you can imagine, Serena was easily favored to win, with 5 unbeaten records leading into the match, including the most consecutive first round wins (46). Both women struggled during the whole match, and Serena should have even won in the second set, being ahead 5-1. You could even see the emotion in Serena's face during her struggle to maintain the edge and was hard to watch. During the THREE HOUR match, Virginnie cramped, even lost points due to shouting during 3rd set but she was scrappy and pulled off the upset over Serena.

Relevance to "The Buck Stops Here?" There's tons of it. I'm a huge fan of the Williams sisters, but no matter what the fight, either big like defeating someone like Serena Williams or small like overcoming the urge to splurge on crappy food, if you can overcome the battle you can win the fight to continue to do your best to improve.  To me that's a fighter, that's what being an underdog is all about; that's a true champion.

Zumbarunner...Whether shaking it or running it, I'll cross the finish line!