Are you one of those people who need the odds stacked against you just enough to motivate you to get out there and prove “the world” wrong? I am. Usually it’s not the world though, just the critics in my own head who seem louder than anyone else. We all have a tipping point; it’s how we get there, and how we manage our response that fascinates me. Does anyone else actively try to identify your own triggers to manipulate yourself into increased efficiency and desired results?
Today I woke up excited to be in Malta
Even the morning rain couldn’t deter me from this morning’s HIT workout, a quick routine found here
It was awkward, slow, shameful, really. How can I be embarrassed knowing I’m the only one who can see how cumbersome I am? How chubby I feel heaving my mass, huffing and puffing in a losing war against entropy? But I was…
Mortified.
It reminded me of how my awesome, far more gifted siblings and I would play sports and why I eventually shifted to sports no one else played so I couldn’t hear the comparisons I “knew” everyone was making about their inferior, adopted sister, who looked physically challenged and uncomfortable in light of their lean agility and natural elegance. Watching them is like watching poetry in motion. Me? I’m like watching a garish, disjointed one act of a train wreck with only one actor on stage.
But hustle I did. And rather than fixate on how painful it was, or how slow, inflexible, and weak I had become I started saying thank you.
Thank you I can move.
Thank you I’m allowed to up my heart rate again.
Thank you I don’t have a fever.
Thank you I can get better.
Thank you I will get better.
Tuckered out way too early, I prepared for work. One small step for non-athletes in gym class, one leap for little me.
After work, I took another pic
And realized it was time for an 8k run
At sunset. My favorite time of day is sunset. It’s like sunrise only not as early…
Running is sacred business, no matter how profane I feel doing it now…
I took a lot of photos, you can find them on Instagram under my handle, foodandthefury, so I won’t bother you. But no matter how slow I was, and no matter how many times I stopped to snap a pic, I tried to relax and enjoy it, to be thankful.
Dad always told me to take one more step than I think is possible. I’ve tried to adopt that as one of my life’s maxims, not just when I was training for an ultra; now that I’m trying to eek out my life through conscious choices, it seems more relevant than when he first told me. He also told me to not train so hard I forget to enjoy the race…words worth living by, if you ask me…
foodandthefury 