A Life Less Ordinary

You've Come So Far, So Keep Going

                Another morning in this first week of my new life. It was getting easier to step out of the box created by my parents and make my inner sassy girl my outer reality. Sixteen years of being told how to dress, what to think, who to talk to and what to become was hard to shake but I felt that I was making progress at leaving the old me behind. Old Sang would have covered her work out clothes in over sized warm up suits and cooked herself before exposing so much skin, the new one was finding the freedom of not caring what others thought...well what most others thought. I was really liking dressing to make my new friends eyes light up.

No meetings this morning and not needing to report for practice left me with a day to prepare for auditions. I'd been practicing but today I needed to iron out the issues I was having with my pieces. I'd cheated and opted to use the music from my exam last spring at least for my violin audition, flute would be a bit harder as I'd done the exam for that over a year ago and the music wasn't as fresh. I had the time to get in a longer work out before spending the rest of the day with my first love. I pulled on my work out clothes and got ready to push myself.

Nathan met me at the track and helped me with my running form. He didn't have any major changes just little tweaks that would improve the efficacy of my stride. Three miles went a lot faster with someone else even though Nathan wasn't running with me for the majority of it. He joined me on the last mile, it was the push I needed to run a little faster.

After a quick cool down and stretch I moved on to sprints. I hated running sprints. I knew why we did them, that didn't make them any less painful or exhausting. After each set Nathan would go over my form and make changes. We were trying to get more speed and endurance out of my form. By the last set Nathan was happy with my performance and time.

"If you keep training like this you should be able to pour on the speed when you need it and still be able to complete your shift with plenty of juice in the tank. Using your first set as the baseline, you managed to shave tenths of seconds off each subsequent set. I think if you implement the changes, we made consistently you'll see even more time shaved off. I know you aren't looking at track and field times but the faster you can run the various length sprints, the better your on-field performance will be in crunch situations." Nathan said. He had a stack of notes he'd made while I was running. We were reviewing them as I was once again cooling down. I still had more exercises to run through before I could head back to my dorm and shower.

"Alright, hit the gym. Raven is in there and he wants to work through your weight program. We've looked over what you already do, and Raven has some suggestions for improving it." Nathan passed me my water bottle and picked up my bag himself. He walked with me to the gym, his arm draped companionably across my shoulders.

I worked through the new exercises with Raven. They were harder than the ones I'd been doing the last few years, but I could see how they would work just as well if not better. My muscles were a quivering mess by the time I had worked through my sets to Raven's standards. I think he was satisfied with my progress. Either that or he was happy with the torture he'd inflicted upon my poor shaking form. I mentioned this to Nathan as I was getting ready to limp my way back to the dorms.

"Nah, he's just excited to see if he can make any of the soccer weenies cry. They are so out of shape and as of yesterday so unwilling to try that Brandon is ready to scrap the team for the year. Not sure if anyone told you but your work outs are being used as the standard anyone who wants to make the team is required to meet. Raven is looking forward to running any of the potential soccer players through your work out, for him the harder you work the harder he can be on them. The end result is you get stronger and he has his sick fun. A win/win for both of you." Nathan's blue eyes twinkled with suppressed laughter.