“….don’t stand around moping, “I dunno what to do… I’m just not sure…” unless you want all of your tomorrows to look like your yesterdays.” –S. Pavlina

July 19 was my last post. YIKES! How did that much time go by? I’ve been dancing the tango with this project for a month now. The running has been on and off. And quite obviously, there has been silence in this forum as well. But I’m picking-up where I left off.

You see, I thought I’d take a week off. We were out of town for a few days…2 of the 3 days were supposed to include jogging. The first day I worked it in. The second day, it just wasn’t feasible to include a 10K run. (“It’s okay, LG…you’ll pick it up on Tuesday”). When Tuesday rolls around, I’m exhausted from my adventures and give myself permission to take the remainder of the week off to rest. That was the first spoke in the proverbial wheel of “Because I can…”

What a pleasant rest I had (yep, that’s lemons-into-lemonade for ya)! Sunday rolls around and I’m planning on trying that 10K from last Sunday. I change the scenery up a bit (thanks to my Sunday running partner) and WHAT A DISASTER!!! A-hem…I mean…the outcome wasn’t quite what I anticipated it to be…and good for me for listening acutely to my body. Yikes!!! Not failure, just feedback, right??!!! I made it half way through without stopping (Sunday’s are supposed to be 10:1 run/walk) then started a precarious stumble downhill from there. I was soooooo disappointed in myself. I soooooo wanted to return to the trail with vim and vigour, finishing strong, jogging the whole time. And WHAM!! The very opposite happened. Now how do I recover from that?

I’m pretty sure I didn’t run the week after that…or very little if I did. I was emotionally peeved at myself and wasn’t following the path of forgiveness. No siree, I was going to resent the hell out of my limitations!

And so I perpetuated this pathetic cycle for a couple more weeks, allowing self-depricating thoughts sabotage my plans, conveniently forgetting all the affirming beliefs that I’ve been nurturing since this journey began.

So now it’s Tuesday of this week and two lovely work colleagues (more than a decade younger than yours truly) invite me to join them for a lunch hour jaunt (that includes hills) on Wednesday. Figuring it was as good a time as any to shrug off the yoke of self-doubt, I accepted their invitation. Jinkies, I was nervous!!!! What if I slowed them down? What if I couldn’t keep up? What if I had to stop and walk? What if….

What a bunch of steamin’ horse SH*T! I can honestly say, I had serious performance anxiety before setting out (I can’t even imagine what olympic athletes go through!!). But it happened. And I did keep up…until half-way…and I did slow them down on the return trip (which they didn’t seem to mind), and I didn’t have to stop and walk (with a lot of silent “you can do it!!” sing-songing in my mind when negotiating the hills). I finished strong and recovered quickly and I’m okay with that.

I didn’t do any happy dances when I crossed the finish line. But I do feel like I’ve overcome a substantially large mental BOULDER that has been plaguing my progress. I couldn’t get over it, I couldn’t get under it, I couldn’t go through it, so I just went around it.

Therefore, have officially picked back up where I left off. And however it rolls-out from here, I will be grateful for the experience, no matter what it brings or where it takes me.

Peace xo