When I lived in California, my deck overlooked a fairly busy road that led to the beach and had a main offramp from Hwy 1. For about two years, I would see a woman run by every day. She started out kinda dumpy (I suspect she had just had a child recently), and over the next year, got looking good. But then she hit a plateau for about six months. She looked pretty good, except that her ass was still pretty dumpy and saddlebaggy. But she didn't give up. She kept running every day, enduring the cat calls, obscene yells, and horn honks of people driving by on the road, usually responding to them with a flip of the bird or her own obscene exclamations. After about six more months of stubborn effort, she got over that plateau, and about six months after that, she was a frickin' goddess.
One day after she had attained buns of steel, I was walking down to the beach and found myself waiting with her at a crosswalk. I wanted to compliment her on not giving up, that it had paid off in spades. But she didn't know me from Adam, and I figured she would assume I was just another perv and stick her finger in my face, so I kept my mouth shut.