For once in
my life, I am being spontaneous. I
basically scrapped all plans this weekend, to jump on a plane to surprise my
cousin who is getting married today. I
am so excited and I can not wait to see everyone. The really hard part will be coming home.
I have been
able to stick to my running workouts with some success despite the demands of work
right now. I have added Sundays to my
training regimen, which helps me feel less guilty when I do not get my runs in
during the week. I still have two more
triathlons this season, so I am still managing to get my bike rides in with
spin classes. But my swimming conditioning has been suffering from the result
of me only being able to go once a week.
I am back to the same page where I put more on my schedule than I could
handle.
What do
they say? Life is what happens while you
are making plans.
Since I
have added Sunday at Starbucks to my running schedule, I have added some new
running buds to the mix. There have been some runners from the running group
RWB who have been super nice. And there
is also a group of ladies being coached under the advanced marathon program,
and although I am not following their plan or being coached, it has been nice
to join them during their runs. It has
made my runs quite enjoyable and painless.
My goal is
to be prepared for the Disney Goofy Challenge in January. So I have to get used to running on tired
legs. Speed is not a goal for me,
although I have been pushing the pace out of my comfort zone. If I can improve on my marathon Personal Record (PR
4:50:20), I will be thrilled. But
priority is to finish 13.1 miles on Saturday and a full marathon 26.2 miles on
Sunday. And then I will have 3 sparkly
Disney Medals....bwah ha ha ha! Yes,
apparently I am still a goofy girl that likes the bling.
I must
confess, one of my mental challenges this weekend on us leaving town was me
wondering how I would fit my 11 mile run in.
I knew if I did not run with Kingwood Fit, I would not do it alone. Which tells me I have a mental weakness. What to do with my mind for close to 2
hours? But that is besides the
point. I am patting myself on my back
this morning for getting up at 4:25am to run my extra mileage before Kingwood
Fit. This is huge for me. I actually had a little break through during my
shower afterward.
When my
alarm first goes off, I have a voice in my head that says really loudly
"FRAAAAACK!!! WHY?" (Only it
doesn't really say "frack", but I do not want to offend anyone out
there on the rudeness of my voice.) When my voice realizes that the alarm is
going off to go run, it then yells at me (oh yes, it yells) on why the H-E,
double hockey sticks (yes, still very rude) did I commit to running? It wants me to cancel, but I feel fine. I had an ear issue earlier in the week that
has finally cleared up. I was not going
to cancel just to sleep. So I forced
myself out of bed and changed. I tried
not to reason with the voice. Somehow I make it out the door.
I finish
the first 5 miles fast. I keep looking
at my watch and we were around a 9 minute pace.
The voice came back. "Slow
down, female dog!" Ugh. I wrestled with the voice the last mile of my
run, when we were under 9 and I managed to keep up.
During the
next 6 miles, I had to turn back early and leave the group. Surprisingly, my nasty mind chatter stopped
but I could still feel the voice pouting in the background. It wasn't happy but now I was almost done. (I
have to confess that my pace had slowed down some though.)
When I was
finished, I felt so good. I did it. I did the 11 miles needed to stay on
schedule. Now I can really relax and
enjoy my spontaneous trip without the guilt or the workout hanging over my
head. And all it took was ignoring the
evil voice. The voice that tries to
sabotage what you need to be successful.
I never regret getting up to run, but I
always regret when I have a chance to run and I pass it up do to
laziness.
So the
bottom line to my sucess is...it will always be me versus the nasty voice.
Jenny
1...nasty voice 0.
Nasty voice...you
are going down!
