Motivation Vacation
This week has been tough. I think my motivation took a vacation and I’ve been finding it hard to get out of bed each morning to run. It seems that the momentum leading into our race last week, plus some unexpected stress (an oxymoron, I think) took its toll on my self-discipline. Such is life.
To insure that I don’t have another week like this one, I’ve had to remind myself of some of the reasons I really do enjoy getting my butt out of bed and onto the pavement or in to the gym:
- Stars. I love to run before dawn and stare at the stars. They have been more visible in some places I’ve lived than others, but no matter where I am I inevitably run with my face up. An added bonus in the summer is fireflies, which are like fallen stars.
- Peace. Another reason I love to run before dawn. Few cars. Occasional fellow runners. The time and space to get my head together.
- More food, less guilt. Not that I’ve ever missed a meal. Trust me. I am blessed with a high metabolism (for which my sister hates me) so I eat a lot anyway. But if I can get a pizza in guilt free, then what the hay?
- Bathing suit season. Need I say more?
- I have triceps? By gum, I do! I found them just recently hidden somewhere under a layer of skin. I would hate to lose them again. It was a long, bloody battle to find them in the first place.
Only five reasons, one for each week day, but there are many more. On weekends I bike, which means I get to go downhill really fast. That’s always worth getting up for.
I’d love to hear from the rest of you. What keeps you motivated when life wants to crash your training party?
Read Full Post | Make a Comment ( 6 so far )A Girl on Track
I am blessed to be involved with a life-changing organization. Girls on the Run© is an empowerment program for girls in 3rd through 8th grade. Its purpose is to show girls that they don’t have to conform to the stereotypes society would impose upon them. They don’t have to give in to pressure—from family, their peers, society. They can choose to be themselves, they can choose to be strong.
They can choose.
You would think by the name that this is a running program. It’s not. Our mission has a much greater scope than to teach girls how to run. They’re kids. They already know how, even if they don’t yet know it, even if they choose not to.
But running, as runners know, is a great tool. Once you learn that you can do it—that you can reach what seem like impossible goals and that your body can do remarkable things—you learn that you can do anything.
You develop confidence. A healthy respect for your body.
I have been blessed to see this becoming (I sometimes don’t really know what else to call it) in many girls, and I have seen the struggle to become in many others. The becoming is beautiful. The struggle is agonizing. I have been watching it in one particular girl this season.
“Eloise” was one of mine 3 seasons ago, when I was her coach in Girls on Track, the program for 6th through 8th graders. You can see in her eyes that she has greatness in her. She is smart, creative, strong. And you can see in the twist of her lips and the tilt of her head the pull from her peers to be something she is not. Dumb. Aloof. Too cool to participate, especially when the boys hang around.
Her coaches this season tell me of the ongoing battle of wills between them and her. She skips the lessons, ignores the coaches, smirks defiantly. They tell her that they want her there but, as with most things, it is her choice to participate or not. Sometimes she chooses not.
But a curious girl, this Eloise. For all her defiance and playing at aloofness, for all her hiding out behind playground equipment and around corners, she keeps showing up. This is, in fact, her third season. And more than anything else she chooses to do or not do, she chooses to run.
Our season ends with a 5K race. The girls train for it during their 10 to 12 weeks of learning to be ok with themselves, and, we hope, learning that they are an important and irreplaceable piece in the puzzle of the world. Many of them do not believe when the season begins that they have it in them to run that far. All of them who come, finish.
In December, Eloise showed up to our 5K race. To get to the starting line, I recently discovered, she walked, alone, 2.42 miles, from her home. I know this, because when I found out, I mapped it.
Our spring season 5K is on Saturday, April 21. The battle of wills between Eloise and her coaches wages on. I think, however, that running will win, and Eloise will be there again. I believe that running gives her a glimmer of her potential. I’ve seen her face when she runs. All the tension disappears and is replaced with determination, joy.
I don’t know for sure if this is how she feels, but if she shows up, I will ask her. I want her to know, again, that she’s on the right track.
Read Full Post | Make a Comment ( 3 so far )Milestones
This week I hit two milestones:
1. I finally reached my sprint goal. (Yay!)
2. I officially registered for the June sprint tri.
I’ve been working toward my sprint goal for a good couple of months. I was so happy when I reached it this week that I almost pulled a George Jetson and flew backwards off the treadmill. Thank goodness for railings.
Not only was I ecstatic because I actually reached my goal, I was—and am—ecstatic because attaining my goal means I get to set a new one. A bigger one. A more challenging one.
Which is why I am doing the sprint tri. I’ve said that this will be my third tri. It will actually be my third and a half. I was so nervous the first time around that my friend and I entered as a two (wo)man team. The tri was called A Little Sand in Your Shoe, and it was on the beach in Guam.
I had to swim from Tumon Bay out to a sand bar and back, bury a ball in the sand, then run down the beach to tag my teammate. She had to ride her bike through the jungle (one participant got lost—I think I got the good end of the deal), run back down the beach, and dig up the ball I had buried.
Except that I was so caught up in the event that I didn’t mark the location of our ball well enough, and my teammate couldn’t find it. We came in 2nd place for the 2-man team anyway. It didn’t matter that there were only two teams. I was hooked.
As I was thinking about that race this week, I recalled the reason I entered it in the first place. It was a challenge. A fun way to see how far I could push myself, see what my body could do. Only I didn’t have enough confidence in myself to do it alone, and I was fortunate to have a friend in the same boat. Funny how often we end up hanging out with people who are so like us.
That got me to thinking about the reason I set out to do two sprint tris on my own. My motivation for them, as it turns out, was not so uplifting. Each of the two tris were like bookends containing a a heavy life load. The collapse of a marriage. Sickness. Death. I needed something to hold on to, something of my own. I needed to know that I could rely on myself—and I needed to preoccupy my mind and my time. At this point in life, I was figuring out how to do that without self-destructing.
Turns out that running—competing in tris and half marathons and other races—is good therapy. It shows you what you’re made of. It gives you confidence and peace. At least it does for me.
This time, my third full sprint tri, I am back to where I started in Tumon Bay—almost. I set this particular goal not to dull any pain or preoccupy my mind. I am blessed. Life is, after all, really good. I set this goal to challenge myself, and to have fun. But now I have the confidence to rely on my own abilities, whether I succeed or fail.
I may know who I am, but races always surprise me. I get to learn more about what I’m made of. And that’s a goal worth achieving.
Read Full Post | Make a Comment ( 3 so far )If I Let My Mind Wander, Will It Come Back?
One thing I’ve always loved about running is the freedom and peace it brings me. No matter what life throws at me, I’ve been able to catch it on a run, reframe it, shrink it, smooth it out, and move on. When I’m outside and let my mind go, it seems to know where to run on its own. Until recently, I’ve only associated that freedom and peace with being outdoors. As a result, each time I lace up and move out, I get excited. But each time I lace up and move in—to run on a treadmill—I get weighed down by dread.
Lately I’ve been running on a treadmill to heal an injury. My task is to overcome muscle memory from years of running crooked, the result of a glitch in the spine and a pelvic girdle that swivels to the left like a broken bar stool, culminating in tremendous hip and knee pain. Our bodies, brilliant as they are, adapt to our movements, however inefficient and “wrong” they are. This is muscle memory. Bodies unconsciously perform the way they’re trained to. In trying to retrain my muscles to work right, I have to make a conscious effort to intervene and redirect them to reshape their memory.
Running on a treadmill where I can set my pace and forget both it and the terrain is something I should have been doing for months, but it took me that long to move myself inside, to face the deadening dread I’ve come to associate with treadmills and ceilings.
I’ve come to realize, however, that as much as our bodies have muscle memory, our minds do too. What’s more, the two are linked. Runners particularly seem to get this, whether they know they do or not. Runners often feel the connection between mind, body, and soul. When they are in harmony, we forget ourselves; we feel a runner’s high. When they are not, we feel everything, including pain.
Our mind’s muscle memory is at work all the time. What we think, feel, remember is tied to places, people, events. What we think effects our emotions; what we feel affects our body. This explains why our stomach knots up when we enter a certain building or see a particular face. Our bodies have been trained by our thoughts to react in a certain way. Muscle memory is part of the mind/body relationship. There’s no separating them.
Like our body, our mind can be retrained. We can let our thoughts go out to wander while we run—such is the joy and peace of running—but how mindful are we of where they go? We hold thought in our hands like a bird. Is it a dove, sent out in hope of returning with the olive branch of peace? Is it a falcon, unmasked and driven to hunt down the answer to a problem?
Where your mind wanders is up to you. You can choose to let it be contained, to surrender to dread, or you can choose to set it free and bring you joy. If you let your mind wander, it comes back—but it will always wander out in the direction it’s been trained to go.
Now, I make a conscious effort to train my mind as much as I train my body. Where my mind goes, my body follows. And as my dad always used to say, wherever you go, that’s where you are.
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