Turning Failures Into Successes

Okay guys, I have a confession to make.  I'm a geek.  Full fledged OMGEE geek.  I even have the tan lines to prove it.  Seems the longer I stick with running the more geek gear I collect.  I don't run "naked".  I run with an ipod, a Garmin wrist top GPS, a Road ID, and today I added a camelbak to the mix.  Yes I'm aware that I look silly.  I have all this crapola and I'm barely out running for an hour.  *sigh* I can't help it.  I try to blame my family.  My brother, bless his heart is a geek too.  He works on computers, he reads, laughs at and enjoys comic strips about physics, and is the root of my geeky-ness.   Dearest is also a geek.  He has a lexicon on Star Trek, collects military "action figures", and spends hours on end on zombie message boards preparing for doomsday.  Hum.  Maybe I'm the normal one....

Anyway, today being my first day with the camelbak I had some adjustments to make, amazing that just that small amount of added weight from the water changes things.  My past two runs have been... less than optimal.  Heck I've been pretty disappointed with them frankly.

I was afraid that Sunday's run was going to be my downfall.  Sunday was week 8 day 3 in my C25K program.  Eight full weeks of completing every interval even if I thought I was going to pass out doing it.  Until Sunday.  Sunday was the first day I quit.  I was so upset with myself.  I did pause the podcast until I felt like I could run again, but I didn't just stop once.  Amazing how much easier it is to "quit" once you've done it the first time.  I chocked it up to just a really bad day and went on.

Welcome to today.  I picked up and decided to try again.  I decided that instead of trying to repeat W8D3 I'd just move on to week 9.  Yeah no.  I did my warm up walk, started my run, realized I was running a lot faster than I have been, then completely ran out of steam and... yup.  Quit.  I tried two more times and then completely gave in.  I decided that it just wasn't meant to be today.  However, instead of turning around, getting back in my car and going home to Ben & Jerry (which I seriously considered) I decided to at least take a walk.  

So I walked.  I walked for about a mile and a half.  I saw a lot of neighborhood cats that gave me the evil eye.  I even saw one cat that may actually have been a very furry sewer rat.  He certainly looked like a cat.. but he walked very strangely, and quickly shimmied down the storm drain as I approached.  I gave that storm drain a wide berth.  What can I say - reading Stephen King's "It" as a pre-teen scarred me for life.

Then I decided I'd try again.

I seem to have better luck when I'm running on the road in the neighborhood than I do inside the park, for whatever reason.  So I kept running.  I didn't think about it, I didn't obsess about who was watching, (I did obsess a bit about the boxer who looked like he was about to rip his owner's arm out of socket to eat me - but I waved and smiled anyway), I just kept going.

All in all I went a little over four miles in a little over an hour.  I ran a little more than two of those miles. I ran slow as a gnat in jam, but I ran.  I also poured sweat.  There wasn't a dry spot on me.  I felt darned good about that too. 

So even though it certainly didn't go as planned, it went.  I listened to week nine, and week eight.  I walked, I ran, I jogged, I stumbled, I cursed, I smiled, I rambled inside my head.  

In the end, the important thing isn't that I quit running to walk, or that I could run faster, but only for shot periods, or that I ran turtle slow - the important thing is that I kept going. It's a good thing too, because I did have a date with Ben & Jerry tonight.  Sometimes a girl just has to give in to what she wants, because until she does everyone else in the house is going to be miserable.  That's the case in my house at least!