Luis A Rivera

Progress has a side effect nobody talks about.
The better you get, the more you forget how hard the beginning was.
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The pace that once felt impossible becomes your warm up.
The distance that used to scare you becomes a normal Tuesday.
And one day you catch yourself calling slow the exact pace you once prayed for.
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🌱 Everybody you admire started as a beginner who could not do what they do now.
Every fast runner was once the slowest person in their group, learning how to breathe, stopping to walk, wondering if this sport was even for them.
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That is why I try to keep my first version close.
Not to make my progress smaller. To keep it honest.
My times today do not make me more of a runner than the person finishing their first 5K this weekend. We are the same story, in different chapters.
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🧱 And it is not just about pace.
Nothing I have today arrived overnight: not the fitness, not the endurance, not this community.
It was built the slow way, run by run, year by year, starting from almost nothing.
Forgetting that is how I would start believing I was always like this.
I was not. I was built, one ordinary run at a time.
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🙌 In my case it started even simpler: showing up to support people.
Whoever wanted to run, we were there. No spotlight, nothing behind it, just support.
Everything that came later grew out of that: the runners, the community, the doors that opened.
When something grows, it is easy to forget the first hands that built it. I never want to be the one who forgets.
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Stay fast if you can. Stay faster if you want.
Just never forget where you came from.
The beginner you were is the one who got you here.
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What was your first race time, or your first mile ever? Tell me below. No shame here, we all started somewhere 👇
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#runningwithlucho