I'm finding myself in this bizarre state of flux lately, and it's absolutely affecting my running and training. I feel like one of my patients: post-surgery but not yet discharged. I think all of the mental and emotional exhaustion that I've been experiencing lately in both my professional and personal life came to a head this past weekend and as a result, running suffered.
Friday provided me with a strong 12 miler in the snow and sleet and freezing rain, but the cold was apparently taxing enough that I was forced to rest the next day. If I didn't know any better I would have thought that my quadriceps were bleeding as I was walking around on them. Yesterday was supposed to be a monster long run of 22 miles, but I was only able to creak out eight because mentally, I was worn out and couldn't focus. At least it was sunny, albeit windy. Normally, I would be my own worst enemy right now with brutal berating, but for some unknown reason, I'm being easy on myself. My next marathon is in 27 days, and as long as I can do an 18-miler and a 20+ miler between now and then with regular, consistent mileage, then that will be sufficient. This just means that I'll run my ninth marathon in "good enough" shape, rather than "going to blow the doors off of this one" shape, but there's always the fall. Then of course there is my first ultramarathon a week later, but I digress. Again, as I've been realizing, mindset is critical to training and right now I'm running on fumes. I am in a state of flux, and I'll get there, I just need to keep reminding myself of this.
More notably, this weekend I had a funny moment concerning choice. Saturday night was spent with me canceling out on plans and home by choice and it felt amazing. I finished cleaning the house and took a hot shower and it struck me: I've spent the last year running around like a mad woman and as a result am either not-at-home, or entertaining -someone- in my house, or keeping busy with doing work-from-home-when-home. All of it is by choice, but as a result I've been neglecting to keep a certain person happy: me. I've never actually enjoyed a lazy evening in my own house. So, with the house clean, I lit some candles, made a fabulous steak and broccoli crockpot stew and enjoyed a foreign film and a book before retiring at an hour where I would be normally getting ready to leave the house for the night. By choice, I did the same thing on Sunday night. I'm sure the novelty of this will wear off eventually, but for now it was just what I needed. As a result, I'm choosing to make today ultra-productive and sunny although it's not sunny outside.
This week is going to be a great one. Sure, everything is in a state of flux, but everything is positive and I'm going to choose to celebrate it. To celebrate the familiar part of flux, I'm kicking off the week by having dinner with a very old friend to plan an upcoming race weekend together. I have a race of some distance on the calendar every weekend for the next seven weeks straight, some with friends, others solo.
To celebrate the unknown part of flux, I'm choosing to do something new and entirely different and I'm both nervous and excited. A wise person told me recently in the past two weeks that when emotionally hurting, the best thing to do is to make friends with the pain and use it as fuel. So, I decided to take my usual monthly goofing-off-budget and am choosing to do something useful and healthy with it instead: I'm joining a boxing gym. I'm excited and nervous to learn how to box, but it could just be the cross-training that my body has been craving. Or at least, I'll try it for a bit and see if I like it. Stay tuned.
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