My Come-to-Jesus Meeting

It's runs like today that make me question why I even like running. It takes a lot of pride-swallowing, like letting go of the fact that walk breaks WILL happen, running against the wind is hard (but hey, if you're running on an outdoor track, you WILL get the tailwind that pushes you and speeds up your time on that stretch-haha), and the time sometimes feel like it drags and drags and drags. I recently started running using the Jeff Galloway Training Method, which means you alternate runs with short walk breaks. Three minutes of running, one minute of walking for me. And I can tell you that that one minute of walking ... waiting for it is like a fat kid waiting for the oven timer to go off for the cake to finish baking. It's painful. 

My mind and body had a battle today, and my mind won after 22 minutes. I paused my workout, paused and just stared out into the horizon, pacing and shaking my hands. I had a come-to-Jesus with my mind and beat it down one or two notches. My mind, after all, was the one jerk who kept me from even running TWO minutes straight before it told my legs they were tired. What a mental war! There were tears, oh yes, there were tears. But *I* won. Good thing I'm stubborn. Good thing I can swallow my pride and keep going, however long it takes, however many walk breaks I need. This whole running thing doesn't come easy for me and my huge victories may be small for many, but maybe *this* is why I love running. It challenges you in a million ways, and takes a stubborn heart and lots of come-to-Jesus meetings.

Back ... and stronger than ever.

So, I'm not going to bore you with a recap of my year-long hiatus. To sum it up, my body hated me last year (and still does, from time to time). With my sports med doc's blessing, I decided to fight back, let pain be my guide and get back into running again. To say I'm so happy to be back is an understatement. This time around, I'm doing things different, y'all. Among those things:

• Going with the flow. Pace? What pace? Okay, okay. Maybe I do notice my pace from time to time and get hella excited when I run faster than the run before, but I don't get mad when I'm slow as molasses.
• Shooting for the big 'un. My goal, yes, is to run a half marathon (this girl does NOT have the time to train for anything more at this point in my life, what with three kids, two of whom who are super active in activities, a toddler who still needs me, a business, a part-time job and a possible amazing opportunity coming soon). But I've gotta face the facts: Training is a balance of life. For me, my day is planned down to the minute, and I have to slip training in where I can. When I trained for my half marathon last year, training consumed me. So far, I have a quarter-marathon in my sights in May. Slow and easy and knowing that as long as I stay active and make sure I run my long runs, I'll make it. 
• No stopping=sucky. I was HUGE on my endurance and trying to run straight through last year. This year, nope. Not so much. I'm a fan of Jeff Galloway's program and am happily running three minutes, walking one. And I don't care. I look forward to those little walk breaks. And you know what? My pace is faster (shhhh, not that I notice per the bullet above).

I hope I'm not jinxing myself by jumping back in this blog, but hey, it's been a great run (see what I did there), so far, and I know my legs have many more miles ahead of them. XO