Running In Place

Not so long ago I was lamenting about how I alway manage to sabotage my efforts by holding myself to unrealistic standards and then get all sad and depressed that I don’t measure up. This has been a lifelong behavior, played out in multiple venues long before running ever entered my world. Interestingly, playing out the same old scenario with running has somehow made this pattern no longer acceptable to me. In other areas, I would jump in head first, drown, quit - with running, I can’t seem to quit, I can’t seem to talk myself out of it or flog my self-esteem enough to make me not want to try again. I find that wonderful, amazing, inexplicable - what is it that keeps me going back? And the resultant mindset has allowed me to expand my view of things I can do (vs. all the things I tell myself I can’t do) - like quitting my job (last day 3/31) and finding something that makes my spirit happier.

So my antedote for ruining my runs by obsessing about how slow I am was to not bring Garmin and run for a period of time with no attention to distance. That has been great - I mean really great - I have experienced my runs in a different way and I think that, no matter what else I do, I will always make time for runs that have no time/distance expectations. However if I’m going to improve, if I’m going to run a 15K in July with a “heartbreak hill” at the end, I suppose I should start to pay attention to what I’m doing, and to figure out what I reasonably want to accomplish. So today I brought Garmin, and it turns out I’m running 5K without even having realized it - admittedly slow, but I’m not going to get hung up on that. No. I’m. Not.

For the past 3 weeks, the American Heart Association’s Heart Run pledge form has been sitting next to the computer. I don’t know why I have been ignoring it, telling myself I’m not going to “race” (though it’s not at all a race). Tonight I looked at it completely differently, tonight I thought “why am I not jumping on this??” First of all, it matters to me (lots of heart disease in my family), second of all, if I’m going to get better I have to get better. I want to (and feel like I’m ready to) start training for something. The Boilermaker is a ways away, and although I am registered and my $$ are paid, it’s so far off that it hasn’t really become real yet. So now I am all set up to do the The Heart Run in March. There are 3 mile, 5 mile, 10 mile, and 30K runs - if I had to, I could do the 3 mile run today - slow, oh so slow - but I could do it. Therefore, I am going to go for the 5 mile run. Part of me wants to stay where I’m at and part of me knows it’s time to get better. I’ll only get better by being better.

P.S. If it suits anyone to check out my Heart Run web page to consider sponsoring my efforts I am most grateful.