I'm neither a serious nor gifted athlete. However, what I lack in natural ability I make up in unwavering drive and an insatiable appetite for getting the best of myself - what I've come to term as my "inner badass".
If you're the competitive type, you know what I mean: it's the voice in your head that doesn't let you quit. It rips you out of bed in the morning and pushes you out the door for a run. It's the one that calls it quits on a Saturday night in favour of an early morning adventure.
But it is also responsible for exhausting extremes. It pushed me to train for six months to fight in a charity boxing match last year and it's what drove me to run hundreds of kilometres training for ultramarathons. It also gave me the guts to quit my job as a corporate lawyer to pursue a writing career.
So after a year of change and challenge, it was time to give myself - and my inner badass - a break.
For two months I swapped my morning run for a yoga session, and let my hair down.
Once the time passed, I eagerly got back into training. Ten minutes into my first run I noticed something heartbreaking. Instead of the voice of irrationality egging me on, all I heard was: "Wow, this is hard work, can we stop now?"