Risin’ up, back on the street
Did my time, took my chances
Went the distance now I’m back on my feet
Just a woman and her will to survive
This week my focus is motivation, why am I doing this? How will I get and stay motivated?
It’s just four months and 16 days until my trail run and I’ve somewhat wasted the first week and five days I’ve had to train by not covering all the miles I wanted to run and still struggling with a serious jelly bean addiction. Of course I have my excuses, I got food poisoning for a couple days, I had to travel to a conference, I had some big deadlines like final exams and grading, our sub-pump went out and flooded our basement a bit (we discovered we have a covered hole filled with water in our basement that looks like the well in the movie the Ring, no joke, it’s very creepy) and the new season of True Blood was out on iTunes. Unfortunately, “behavior breeds behaviors”, on a busy morning putting out fires and scrambling to get yourself and kids out the door it gets really easy to tell yourself “I’ll just run tonight” which at night time with homework and housework and etc. etc. quickly changes to “I’ll just run in the morning”. Once something becomes part of your routine, you tend to stick with it, so my focus for the next two weeks will be to get my training routine soundly in place but incorporate some added flexibility to allow for life to happen in the midst of training.
I picked the 50K trail run because of all my options it’s what I found the most motivating when I imagined myself actually doing it. I know I’ll be very challenged by the experience, but it’s still an achievable outcome. And I love trails and the outdoors, I love that everyone experiences and appreciates the outdoors in their own way, and I think if you’re born and raised up north like me, there’s no greater way to experience nature than to be out running, hiking, immersing yourself in it. Running for me is meditative, joyful and brings me clarity and peace that I never experience if I’m not running. I ran a marathon up north a few years ago that only had a few hundred participants and during the entire run I saw only a few
handful of folks along my way. Looking back on the experience now I can say that it was one of the best days of my life, my mind was so clear and focused the entire time. I can remember exactly how I felt and what I was thinking, the faces of the people who inspired me along the way, the 67-year-old who ran with me a ways and told me he had another marathon to run the next day, the man from Kansas who kept going even though he was really struggling and realized “it was much colder up north than he expected” and the two young men who stayed back to support him, the lady I kept seeing at every water station who commented on how well I was doing and told me to “keep going, keep going!!, what songs I was listening to at each point along the way and how well Matt May’s song “Tall Trees” fit the environment, how privileged I was to have grown up in that beautiful area, and seeing how proud my husband and kids were of me every time they circled around to check on me. Very cliche, but for me it was a day I was so in the moment, it wasn’t about finishing in a certain time or even about finishing at all, it was just about the experience.
So my plan for this week is to stick to my training plan and find ways to buffer against life’s constant demands, focus on inspiration and motivation by reminding myself why I am doing this, being appreciative and grateful that I have the health and time to train for this, and continue to surround myself with people who are positive, supportive and wonderful to be around!
There and back again 