Faulty Thinking

Although I am running again, I am coming up with excuse after excuse on why I don't or shouldn't need to run as far. I keep giving myself a pass on the hard work. I tell myself that I lost a month of training and so, I need to "ease" back into it. Don't get me wrong, I've said the correct words out loud. I'm just giving you some insight on what's going on inside my head. Out loud I say things like, "I've lost a month of training and I have got to get it in gear and get crackalackin'!"  That's what I say out loud. While running, I tell myself. You've run really well... You've run 20 minutes straight. I really didn't think I'd be able to do that. I think you can quit now. In fact, you probably should quit to avoid muscle strain. Yes.... that really is what I think you should do.It's really wise to take it slow and ease into things. You don't want to injure yourself. While some of that logic is true, I allow the "ease up a bit" phrase to rule. Tuesday I was to run five miles. I ran 3.5 and decided I had run enough and that I'd run the other 1.5 in the evening when I went to the gym with my husband after he got off work. And I did do that. In fact, I ran 2.5 miles in the evening, so I did end up running a total of 6 miles for the day. However, I'm going to be running 26.2 miles ALL AT ONE TIME in three months. So, running five miles in one fell swoop should be no big deal.

I'm writing about all of this right now - at 5:56 AM because I woke up and the faulty thinking wasn't just talking it was screaming inside my head. "You didn't get much sleep last night. You stayed up late and watched fireworks. Then you had the dog sleep with you because she was afraid...or you were worried she'd be afraid....the cat woke you up at 4:15 AM playing with who knows what and it's just not good to run when you're so tired. In fact, you probably should just take a nap! Plus, did you notice the humidity level?  It's 87% humidity right now!  It's soup out there!  Even though you're running at the gym, I thought I'd throw that in there too."

Today's run is to run 3 miles and to run them "hard."  So, I'm to run as fast as I can. With the faulty thinking as my cadence, I'm not sure how fast I'll be running. I pulled out my ipod hoping that there was some tiny bit of battery life left so I could drown out the internal dialogue, but there isn't even a hiccup of life coming from it. And, of course, I have no earthly idea where the chargers are. But, after confessing my frustrations and my fight with you, I'm going on the search for the charger. Hopefully I can get the ipod charged enough to get me through this run.