It rained Saturday night–hard. All night long, I tossed and turned in bed, listening to the rain pound my house. I was not looking forward to running 14 miles in the rain the following morning. I couldn’t help but think to myself, “If I can’t mentally handle 14 miles in November, how am I going to handle 20 in February, or 26.2 in May?”
It seems that I wasn’t the only one worried about the run. T didn’t look too enthusiastic when I showed up at her house at 8 AM. As we trotted down the driveway, we talked about how much we enjoy our mid-week, shorter distance runs. We also talked about how we always seem to dread the long, Sunday runs.
By mile two, we had stopped whining and were settling into our groove. 2 hours and 20 minutes later, we were finishing up. Yeah it rained a little bit (but not as much as I feared) and the wind blew a little bit, but we completed the distance. And It felt great.
I went to bed last night with the intention of rising early this morning and going to spin class at 5AM. Unfortunately, that didn’t happen. I used my sore legs, hips, and butt as an excuse to take the morning off which I shouldn’t have done.
These days, I’m feeling really fit. I definitely don’t look like the guy in picture for this post. But, I haven’t missed a run in a while. We’ve been consistently running 4 days per week with a weekly mileage total between 21 and 29. I still haven’t weighed myself in a while, but my smaller clothes are still fitting me very well and my belts are still in the same holes that they were when my scale broke so I can’t have gained too much weight.
Even though I’m feeling good about my fitness, there’s still work to do. And this is where I’ve been struggling. I’m not counting calories, and I’m not lifting weights. It’s time to get back on track with these two aspects of my fitness. If I really want to drop those last 5 pounds and get my body fat down around 15% then these things need to happen and I know it. I wish the switch would flick and that I could get back on a roll. I like lifting weights, I just need to get started again. Soon.
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That is really really great that you can continue your workouts. It must have to do with having a workout partner. I live in Michigan and I’m having a terrible time keeping up my exercise routine now that its dark every hour I’m not at work (and cold:( ). Over the summer I was training hard (1hour+/day) for triathlon season and marathons and now I’m just pooping out. All I want to do after work now is sit on the couch and eat!
Actually – you really shouldn’t have tried to do spin class the day after a long run like that. Shoot – you should know all about recovery by now! The day after a long run – you really don’t want to do anything more than a light run – 30 to 45 minutes at an easy pace. The day after that you can do the spin class if you want, but back to back like that will just wear you out and put you into over-training mode.
I’m intrigued by what you said: “I wish the switch would flick.” I’ve used almost the identical words to describe what happens between “I really should do fill-in-the-blank but just don’t care enough right now to do it” and “nothing will stop me from accomplishing fill-in-the-blank.”
It’s a mystery sometimes, isn’t it?
Here’s to you and your fitness journey!
Mary
That elusive switch. It’s amazing how sometimes it’s so very easy and other times just impossible.