The Gateway Goal (and $500 Under Armour Giveaway!)

This is the third and final installment of my involvement with Under Armour’s What’s Beautiful campaign. While I was initially sad to be done writing about this experience, I realized while I was mulling over what to say for my last update, that really, these three posts are just the beginning of a new and exciting piece of my athletic and running life, and I’m pretty sure that’s what this challenge is actually all about, so let’s look at this post as less “goodbye goal” (tear tear) and more “HELLO ULTRARUNNING, I AM HERE TO STAY”.

Back when I signed up for this campaign, I thought the dates of each post would line up well for providing updates about my progress toward finishing my first ultra. Step one was to set the goal, step two was to train for the goal, and step three was to demolish the goal. Three posts. Boom.

Fast forward a few weeks and you guys all know I achieved my goal well before my second, and certainly this third post, was written.

So instead of boring you for the 17th time in the last few weeks about the dirty details of my Dirty German 50k, I want to talk more about the most exciting part about completing this challenge: what now.

Yes, I finished my first ultra.

And yes, I clearly achieved my goal for this challenge.

And while both things are fantastic and worthy of lots of celebrating, this campaign is about much more than achieving a single goal. It’s about changing your mentality toward physical challenges, about redefining “beauty”, and, in my opinion, most importantly, about empowering female athletes.

Well, no question, my involvement with this campaign did all of the above.

I finished the 50k with four hours, twenty four minutes, and four seconds of running that, by no traditional definition of the word, was “beautiful.” I tripped on logs, fell in mud, squealed at reptiles, and emerged from those woods a sweaty, dirty, tired mess of a runner. But it was one of the best and most rewarding feelings of my life.

And now, after completing that distance, coming in second for women, and eighth overall, I am ravenously hungry for more. Those 31 miles were not just a single day’s accomplishment, but a gateway for many more goals to be set and challenges to be dominated.

I’m all about setting goals that will not be easy to achieve. While I knew I could finish an ultra, doing it within three weeks of my goal marathon put a little question mark next to my desire to finish the distance, and finish it in a way I could be proud of (read: without having course officials roll me across the finish line).

And I didn’t just finish the race, I finished with a result that stunned me and excited me and is challenging me to set new, scarily ambitious goals for the rest of the year (and beyond.) 

I want to run more ultras. I want to run longer ultras. I want to run faster ultras. I want to win an ultra. And I want to do all of these things because I took the first step to do something scary, something terrifying even, and surprised myself with how capable I was of crushing my goal.

If you haven’t started a challenge yet, don’t worry, it’s not too late. Do yourself a favor, click over to What’s Beautiful, and decide to embrace a terrifying goal. I bet you my collection of race bling and running shoes that you’ll love the experience, from start to finish, and realize you’ve only just begun.

And lucky you guys, even if you don’t walk away with my door knobs full of medals, you can win something else: a $500 gift card giveaway from Under Armour. To be entered for a chance to win, answer this question – how do you keep motivated to achieve your personal fitness goals?

SWEEPSTAKES/GIVEAWAY RULES

Rules:

No duplicate comments.

You may receive (2) total entries by selecting from the following entry methods:

a) Leave a comment in response to the sweepstakes prompt on this post

b) Tweet (public message) about this promotion, including exactly the following unique terms in your tweet message: “#whatsbeautiful” “#sweepstakes”; and leave the URL to that tweet in a comment on this post

c) Blog about this promotion and leave the URL to that post in a comment on this post. To comply with FTC Guidelines (see http://www.ftc.gov/opa/2009/10/endortest.shtm), entrants’ blog posts must disclose that they are receiving a sweepstakes entry in exchange for writing the blog post.

d) For those with no Twitter or blog, read the official rules to learn about an alternate form of entry.

Entries from all participating blogs will be pooled for winner selection; only two entries per household. This giveaway is open to US Residents age 18 or older. Winners will be selected via random draw, and will be notified by e-mail. You have 72 hours to get back to me, otherwise a new winner will be selected.

The Official Rules are available here.

This sweepstakes runs from 6/12-6/30.

Be sure to visit Under Armour’s page on BlogHer.com where you can read other bloggers’ posts!