I Failed 75 Hard

Well, it happened again. I failed 75 Hard. However, this time I’m not upset about it. Would it have been nice to complete it? Yes absolutely. But I learned something about myself. 75 Hard does not align with my current fitness goals. I’ve been on a “health and wellness journey” since I can remember. Over the years, my goals have differed a lot. It started with wanting to be as small as humanly possible, to just wanting to be okay with food, to again wanting to be as small as possible, to finally wanting to be strong and happy.

I want to be able to have rest days without feeling guilty. I want to be able to honor my body, and I want my confidence to grow. I do not want to feel burnt out, over exhausted, and like I have to workout. I’ve dealt with an unhealthy relationship with food and exercise and I have no plans on doing that again. Yes 75 Hard is a great program for mental toughness. In the future, I think I could do it and be in line with my fitness goals but for the moment, it just isn’t the program for me. And that is okay.

I’m currently in a healing and growing stage in my life. I’m working on accepting who I am, learning to love and accept the person I am and what I have been through. I’m relearning to trust myself. There is a lot of work I have to put in mentally, emotionally and physically. I do have fitness goals that I am working on, but I want to be able to take a day off when I go out with my mom or my friends. I want to be able to have a glass of wine after a long day of work or when I’m out at dinner with friends and family. I’m still meal prepping, still eating as healthy as possible without being restrictive. And I’m still prioritizing my health.

I’ve also started training for races. This is something I have wanted to do for about 10 years but was always too scared to actually do it. I finally signed up for a 10K race, my first one ever, set to happen in 17 days. I have been running frequently and strength training in preparation for the event. I’ve also just signed up for a half marathon in July. I’m ready to tackle these new fitness goals and I don’t need 75 Hard under my belt for it. I need to focus on me, my priorities, and treating my body as well as possible.

I was about 40 days in when I realized I wasn’t happy with this program. As I’ve talked about in previous posts, but I’ll reiterate in case this is the first post youre reading, I have fibromyalgia and chronic fatigue. I ended up getting a bad flare up and was down and out for 2 days. There was no physical way I could have exercised. The flare up was from doing a tempo run on that Monday. For those that don’t know, a tempo run is a run where you are pushing your pace more than you would on an easy run or a long run. You want to be pushing your threshold and it is time based, not distance based. I ended up pushing my tempo for a full 45 minutes instead of my usual 35 with a 5 minute warm up adn 5 minute cool down. I was totally down and out.

I decided that day that I wasn’t going to start over, I was good with failing this challenge. I knew I didn’t want to be doing it when my boyfriend got home and I would be if I started over. I knew I needed to rest because I was incredibly exhausted, and I knew it was okay. I was and am training for a 10K, I just signed up for a half marathon, and I have training goals. I am so excited for my future with races and strength training. I’m putting myself first and I am working on becoming the best version of myself possible.

Yes, I failed 75 Hard, and that is okay.