I have never considered myself a distance runner. In middle and high school I loved running sprints and relays in track, but anything longer than 400 meters was out of the question. So when one of my best friends in high school suggested for me to go out for cross country during my senior year, I laughed in her face. Me? Run cross country? You have got to be kidding!

I remember the first day of practice was absolute torture. We started off with a mile run and already I could feel myself gasping for air at the end. Our coach then turns to us and says, “Great warm-up mile. Now we will do a two mile run and then cool down with another mile.” What? Here I was thinking that I was done and I still had another three miles to go.

At the end of practice, tears were streaming down my face and I was grabbing my side for dear life because my side cramps were so bad. All I could think at the moment was that I was going to die in the middle of the park and there was no way I would ever be attending practice again.

Well, you guessed it: I showed up for practice the next day, even though I could hardly feel my legs and my lungs felt like they had shriveled up to the size of raisins. At this point, I really wanted to kill my friend for ever convincing me that “it would be fun.” As bad as the first few weeks of practice were, however, slowly the miles became easier and after every practice I felt more accomplished. By the end of the season, I had ran in multiple races, lowered my race time by almost nine minutes, and completed miles in times that I thought were far out of my capabilities.

Fast forward four years and running truly has become a part of me. I get anxious if I go longer than three days without a run. Running for me is a way to take a break from studying and being around people a majority of my day. For the brief minutes or hours that I am running, reality is put on pause.

There are still days where I struggle to find the motivation to go run and all I really want to do is go home and eat Oreos and watch "Keeping Up with the Kardashians" and be happy, but instead I’m running three miles to try to work off the fast food I now consider my daily diet in college. Even on those days where I don't want to run but do, it feels so good to push myself and keep pushing even when I'd passed my goal for the day. It feels good to know that I can "just do it" if I tell myself I can. It feels good to be running.

Running is not something that I ever thought I would love. I only considered myself to be a sprinter and nothing more. It's something I started loving only once I truly decided to challenge myself and change my perception and attitude. I still only run nine-minute miles, and for many runners that is slow. For me, though, I know how hard I have pushed myself to get to that point and can laugh at myself when I think back to high school senior me struggling on the first day of cross country practice.

Every day I continue to grow stronger. I'm not competing with someone else, but rather against myself. I'm competing against that girl who thought running was a waste of time or too hard. I'm showing her what she can do. I'm not going to stop until I reach the end of the race, because this girl is one who can handle anything. I'm done denying who I was or who I am. I'm done making excuses. I'm ready to take on the challenge. I'm done limiting myself. I'm ready to see just what I can do in the long-run. So watch out half marathon, I'm coming for you.