Excuses don't burn calories
*bzzz bzzz bzzzz* "No, please, No" My Fitbit alarm buzzed on my arm telling me that it was already 4am. Time to get up. I got up and stumbled my way into the bathroom and turned the light on (ouch..too bright) and started to think of the excuses I could use to be able to go back to bed. The excuses that I wouldn't feel bad about later.. "I didn't sleep well" that one is true, but I did sleep. "I feel sick" that one isn't true, I felt fine other than being tired. So I ran out of excuses and realized that if I didn't get up and go, I'd be miserable later and mad that I skipped my run. I'd be continuing the spiral I had been on the last few weeks and wouldn't be back on track. I'd fall back to where I was before and I'd put weight back on. So, I got dressed, put my contacts in and was out the door. Drove the 45 minutes to my office park, parked my car and sat for about 2 minutes. Still trying to talk myself out of it, completely dreading the run I was about to do on the treadmill. I was going to try running outside but they are redoing the sidewalks and I'm not about running in the street. I pushed myself out of the car and into the building..down to the locker room and then into the gym.
I started up the treadmill and put it on 4.0, my body was still saying "noooooo" but I did my warm up and then started my run (4.8- started out slow today). This one is 10 minutes of running followed by 1 minute of walking 4X. The first interval wasn't bad, the second was good and I really didn't want to stop running, but I did follow the program.. the third was where I hit my zone. If you run, you know the zone. That point in your run where you are completely feeling it, your feet and breathing are in sync, your heartrate is right where it needs to be and it's just..flowing. This was why I run. I was able to shake off all the stress of the past few weeks and feel like myself again. I was only focused on one thing in that moment: myself. I don't really have a lot of time to just focus on myself so this is truly my time. Then I hit my fourth interval and I did the first five minutes at the 4.8, then bumped it up to 5.0 to finish strong and even ran for an extra minute. That last interval was great, I hit 4 miles on the treadmill and then finished up. I stretched my legs that felt pretty tight (I'll have to foam roll tonight for sure) and hit the showers.
So here I am at almost 10k steps for the day and it's not even 8AM. I'm slightly tired but that is what coffee is for. I'm thinking of what I would have felt like if I had listened to myself and gone back to bed right about now: I'd be miserable. I'd be writing an entirely different blog post and I'd be ashamed. My focus for now is to finish this program and run a 10k, the entire thing. Then, I focus on the half marathon training. Once I finish this program I'm jumping immediately into half training. This has been my goal since I started running and I want it so badly. I wasn't admitting it to myself, but I really do. I said 2 years ago I was going to run a half marathon last October and it didn't happen. It's May and I have plenty of time to train for this.
So, here we go.
I started up the treadmill and put it on 4.0, my body was still saying "noooooo" but I did my warm up and then started my run (4.8- started out slow today). This one is 10 minutes of running followed by 1 minute of walking 4X. The first interval wasn't bad, the second was good and I really didn't want to stop running, but I did follow the program.. the third was where I hit my zone. If you run, you know the zone. That point in your run where you are completely feeling it, your feet and breathing are in sync, your heartrate is right where it needs to be and it's just..flowing. This was why I run. I was able to shake off all the stress of the past few weeks and feel like myself again. I was only focused on one thing in that moment: myself. I don't really have a lot of time to just focus on myself so this is truly my time. Then I hit my fourth interval and I did the first five minutes at the 4.8, then bumped it up to 5.0 to finish strong and even ran for an extra minute. That last interval was great, I hit 4 miles on the treadmill and then finished up. I stretched my legs that felt pretty tight (I'll have to foam roll tonight for sure) and hit the showers.
So here I am at almost 10k steps for the day and it's not even 8AM. I'm slightly tired but that is what coffee is for. I'm thinking of what I would have felt like if I had listened to myself and gone back to bed right about now: I'd be miserable. I'd be writing an entirely different blog post and I'd be ashamed. My focus for now is to finish this program and run a 10k, the entire thing. Then, I focus on the half marathon training. Once I finish this program I'm jumping immediately into half training. This has been my goal since I started running and I want it so badly. I wasn't admitting it to myself, but I really do. I said 2 years ago I was going to run a half marathon last October and it didn't happen. It's May and I have plenty of time to train for this.
So, here we go.
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