Saturday, September 15, 2012

Nasty Voice, Don't Mean a Thing



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!