The struggles, determination, and accomplishments of a young girl with a dream!
SmilesGirl: Being Her Own Kind of Badass
Back when Reanna used to blog :). She is too much of a teenager now but I couldn't erase these gems. Enjoy!
Things about Me (Dec. 2014):
I’m twelve years old. My favorite colors are pink and purple. My favored ice cream is chocolate cookie dough. The coolest bug to me is the butterfly. My favorite marine animal is the bottlenose dolphin. I like bling, bling. I sometimes play soccer with Will, my stepdad.
I was born in Royal Oak, Michigan at 8:34am, my weight was 7 pounds 4 ounces and was 20 inches long. My favorite subjects are social studies and science. I have one dog and a really crazy chicken that once had missing feathers on its back. I like to watch Star Wars movies.
I like to help people and animals in need. I have a lot of Mary’s Moo Moos. My goal was to ride at 24 Hours of Booty (It’s a place where you raise money for charity to help cure children’s cancer) however they cancelled it this year. I hope I can do something like it next year. I don’t know what I want to be when I grow up.
Ares:
It’s hard to train for 24 Hours of Booty. The bike seat was giving my hinny cramps and it really hurt. It really helped when we changed the seat out for a new one. Another thing that helped me was either watching a movie or reading a book while training. It’s really neat when mom rides next to me.
I’m getting better by focusing on pedaling faster than 50 rpms, which is what cadence is. Another thing I was focusing on was going further each ride. Today I rode 9.06 miles! I felt worn out and I felt proud that I finished. My speed was really fast for me. My max speed was 14.53 mph. My heart felt like it was beating really fast. Today I wore a heart rate monitor and it felt really weird. It measured my heart beats. It said my heart rate max was 179 beats per minute. Wow that’s fast!!
Santa gave me some new bike shorts. They have lots of colors on them with padding that felt really weird. They felt bigger than my other shorts. They were pretty comfy. They help my hinny with the bike and bike seat.
I feel that it is awesome I am improving. The progress I am making is really good. I got to have fun with my mom and I went really fast! I am looking forward to riding my bike again. - December 2014
Cross Country - Fall 2014
What I like about cross county is that I can learn to run races like my mom. The team was really big for a cross country team. One race we got really cool medals. The end of the year party was lots of fun. We had lots of sweets and I even got Root Beer.
What I disliked about cross country is that the first one was the longest race of the year. I was really sad that I was the slowest one on the team. But I didn’t want to quit even though I was the slowest on the team. The team thought that I was really slow.
I learned that I should never quit. We should all help anybody that thinks that they can’t finish a race or a track meet. We should always never quit when we think we can’t finish the race and we should be nice to everybody and try to make new friends. I like cross country and I can’t wait to run again next year.
Me and my bike "Ares":
After I got my bike on my birthday I had to pick out a name for my new bike. I thought about naming it Zeus but I didn’t want a bike that‘s named after a Greek god that gets mad easily. What I like about Ares is he’s really fast, and the god of war. With that idea I picked Ares. From that point on my bike’s name stayed as Ares.
When I wanted a bike was when I was turning twelve years old. I wanted one because all of the other kids either knew how to ride one or already had one. Why I didn’t have one is because I had a fear of falling off my bike. My dad knows why I was scared of failing off a bike. I don’t think he could remember it that well. He wanted me to learn how to ride a bike without training wheels. So he started me peddling and pushed me and the bike with me on it. I started to go really fast. A minute later I ended up on the ground with the bike on my legs and it hurt really badly. From that point on I was scared of riding a bike without training wheels.
How I will conquer riding my bike is I will keep training on my bike every single day. Why you may ask is because I want to ride my bike at 24 Hours of Booty next year,which is a charity to raise money to cure childhood cancer. It only happens once a year. This year there were so many people that came either to watch or were riding in the race. It was so cool that people weren’t scared falling off their bike. Even the kids weren’t scared either. So the next day I told my mom that I wanted a bike. And that’s how all of this started. - January 2015
My Visit To Podium:
Yesterday I went to Podium so Mr. Matt could check my bike seat and give me some advice on getting better. Then today I took a bike ride to test what I learned.
Mr. Matt said that I should keep my hands on the bars, learn to do new exercises that will help with my feet, and that I can keep my hands in different spots on the handle bars if it hurts. When I have to keep my hands on the handlebars it really hurts and I felt really bad that my mom made me hold my hands on the handlebars. One reason I should keep my hands on the handle bars at all times is if I don’t when I ride outside I might fall off and that hurts really badly. You could lose control of the bike. You could possibly land on the hard ground!!
The thing that motivates me to ride is that I can ride my bike Ares at 24 Hours of Booty in October. The thing that makes it all possible is working hard and training with my mommy. What I’m scared about is that I might have to ride for a really long time on my bike Ares and my hinny might hurt really badly.
My Bike Fear:
How I felt bout riding my bike was really bad. The bad fears were about falling off my bike. l'm not the only kid that has this fear. All kids will have this fear of falling off their bike. Somehow kids overcome their fears about falling off their bikes. Most of all I’m the only kid that can’t face my fears.
My other is fear is sometimes about the dark. I have 3 night lights for this fear. Fears can be good/bad. My fear is really in the bad fear category because it makes my head not want to let me do something my heart wants to do. In my mom’s way she doesn’t want me to think about it too much. So I don’t think about it and I may fall off either way.
What I learned from my mom is that it’s okay to fall off my bike and we should just get back on the bike. In the end I’m still scared of falling off my bike but I am getting braver.
Throwing Up While Running:
When I race I don’t always throw up. I did once this year at a race with Mrs. Mulder in elective. The running elective was fun but the bad part was getting sick towards the end of it. After I threw up I felt better and I ran on. When I told her she said “It is okay to get sickwhile running.” Now I know that is okay to get sick in a race. I still will cry after throwing up.
What feels queasy to me is my belly. Sometimes my ribs hurt while I sprint. I have no clue why these things would hurt while I run. I know why my ribs would hurt but why my belly would feel unsteady? It’s probably because I’m not running right in races or in my elective for this quarter. One thing would hurt at one time and the other thing would hurt at another time. It’s mostly when I run my ribs would hurt. I am used to my ribs hurting more than my tummy feeling sick.
How I try to feel better is either I just keep going to the end and tell my mommy so I can go to the restroom or I just see if I need to throw up on the side of the road. If neither of these things works I wait to ask my mommy what I should do. I usually wait to ask my mommy what to do because I trust my mom the greatest amount of the time. In all throwing up is okay if I’m running in any event. - Fall 2015
Lessons Learned in Cross Country - Fall 2015:
What I learned in cross country this season is that we should stick together in all off the races that come our way. Our coach was really funny at times and a great runner like my mommy. The coach was almost the same as my mom but a different person that taught us a lot of things and also trained very well.
We learned lots of things from our coach and also learned how to run faster at all of our races. We had an awesome coach to help train us along the way. We trained a whole lot during the season.The training days were really long and pushed us to our limits and it was the most painful for me out of everybody. We always came to all of the training days we had to go to. We were pushed to our limits24/7.
The end of the year was really fun and I even got faster over time. At the end of the season we usually have a really big party that everybody on the team comes to. My favorite part about the party is that we get to eat and we also get to have fun with our coach. We usually get to play soccer since the boys like it so much. The best part is after the year is over we get to start cross country all over again. I can’t wait to learn more stuff about cross country and get to see our coach more.
Always Try and Try Even When It's Hard.
- Reanna, Age 10
Feb. 2020 - Reanna is now a 17-year-old attending Grady High. She loves going to X3 to practice kickboxing and jiu-jitsu. Her dog, Chloe, is the love of her life. She loves pets, babies, and old people :). She says she wants to go to college to major in History and work at a museum one day. I hope she works at a nursing home because she is amazing with the elderly, and the world needs more people who love them. Reanna's compassion for all people is amazing. I could not be prouder to be her mother.
THE LOVES OF MY LIFE...Reanna
Angela Gill Nelms