So while not entirely consistent, I have been trying. And there for a while I thought I might be improving. But if you follow me on Twitter (@agirlandherrun) then you probably saw that yesterday's run was a particularly bad one. Not just bad, as in I didn't accomplish what I wanted, but truly bad, as in I came home, promptly sat on the couch and contemplated just quitting altogether. I told myself lots of lies in those post-run moments - "I'm never going to get past this hurdle" "My body just wasn't made to run" "I simply can't do it". And one point, I really started to believe them. It doesn't help one's psych either when the scale seems to be moving in the wrong direction {another topic for another day} giving me further reason to just throw in the towel. Then, after a long hot shower to soothe my achy muscles, I did what all logical people do - found something to distract myself in the laziest way possible - I grabbed a book and curled up in bed.
<< Side note: I'm currently reading "Unbroken" by Laura Hillenbrand. As a dedicated fiction reader, this one is a little out of my normal scope of books, but Ms. Hillenbrand is a phenomenal writer and has crafted this story in such a way, that I literally can't put it down. If you're a reader, or just like history, I would highly recommend this book. >>So as I'm reading about this amazing story of survival, by no less than a Olympic RUNNER, I realized I'm selling myself short. So I'm taking one step forward and two steps back some days. It happens. Ok - so I managed to only run about 4-5 minutes total over the course of 30 mins, but I covered almost 2 miles. That more that I did last month, heck it's more than I did the day before. That's got to count for something, right? I wrapped up the evening feeling a little less discouraged and resolved I wasn't going to give up just yet.
Then this morning, as we were getting ready for work and chatting, my husband said the smartest, yet simplest thing. In the midst of my lamenting about not being able to do the training, he pointed out that maybe I should just start over. Huh? Start over? Why would I do that?! But as the thought sunk in, I realized that's probably what I should do (or better yet, should have done to begin with).
When I started running on July 3, I wasn't following a programing. I was just running. And that was fine, but I started realizing my results weren't consistent and I felt like I couldn't get past a certain point in my run. At that point, I decided to give the Couch to 5K method a shot. However, in my cockiness, I opted to start on Week 3 because I could totally do 3 minutes of running no problem {not entirely true, but I wanted to think I could}. However, when the game stepped up and I find myself where I am now, flaming out (somewhat literally, my legs were on fire) at week 4, I realized, it's because I haven't been training for 4 weeks to get my muscles in shape to do the week 4 workouts. Week 3 I did, but just barely. My lung may be working fine, my legs haven't seen this much activity in years. {So maybe I'm not horrible at this running thing after all?!} Just as there's no crying in baseball, there's no cheating in running. You can't jump ahead just because you think you should - believe when I say this, my legs are reminding me of this with every step I take today.
Which means today, I'm starting over. I'm starting with Week 1 Day 1 of C25K. I'm going to forgive myself for whatever "failures" I've convinced myself I've committed, and move forward. It's humbling really. But I'm hoping starting over will help build up my muscles, but also my confidence. After all, I've got nothing to lose at this point!
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