Little Dude and Little Dud

I excel at stopping. When I run, I have no qualms with slowing down, taking a break, even fully stopping for a mid-run stretch session. I love it when that blinky red palm tells me to halt at a crosswalk. But this love of stopping has led to bad running habits.

When I feel that urge to stop, I envision a little dud version of myself plopping itself down in my lower back, setting up camp, and settling in like a rock in a hammock. Little Dud drags me down. On my ten-miler yesterday, I was determined to knock Little Dud out of the hammock.

Instead of Little Dud, I need Little Dude. Little Dude is crowded up against the front of my chest, bouncing like a spring, Tae Bo punching the air like a little maniac. Little Dude's got spunk! I can feel that energy in my chest, driving me forward. When I picture Little Dude's relentless momentum, I'm less inclined to give in to the desire to stop. Little Dude's got the stopping qualms I need to develop.

Little Dude kept me running in miles 7-9 when Little Dud usually convinces me to walk. Unfortunately, at mile ten my hip, knee, and ankle started to hurt, and while Little Dude is pretty magical, her analgesic powers are limited. I walked most of that final mile. But I completed ten miles yesterday, when what I really wanted to do was sit next to the fire, eat Christmas candy, and read my book.

Thanks, Little Dude!

Straight Up Tale of Woe, Yo

Let's start with the disingenuous sunny side of the whole debacle:
- I completed my 7th full marathon!
- I didn't give up, even through the heat of Honolulu, blister, chafing and plantar fasciitis!
- What an accomplishment!
- Wow wow wow!
- Happy happy happy!
- Positive positive positive!

That's enough.

Crossing the finish line this year, I felt the least proud I have ever felt at the end of a race. There was no reason to imagine it was going to end well, considering I'd only trained up to ten miles. And yet, at the starting line, under the dark, humid skies of Honolulu, surrounded by tens of thousands of athletes, I couldn't help fantasizing about finish line triumph.

There were a few good moments. Miles 1-10 were pretty fantastic, actually. But a few miles later the walking started, and before long it transitioned into limping, with some mild whimpering to accompany the sound of my dragging feet. And it wouldn't be a marathon without my customary emotional breakdown around mile 25, when I start thinking about all of the people who love me in this world, and then I start to cry a little, and then it gets hard to breathe because crying takes too much oxygen. Thankfully, my go-to mantra, "Buck up, Princess," is the world's most effective method of shutting down hyper-emotionalism and getting back to business.

This marathon was a slap of necessary, but kind of mean honesty. Girl, you suck at this right now. And you're going to keep sucking at this if you don't actually run. You have no business imagining you're going to do well just because you're super good at positive visualization. 

Thanks, marathon. And so the real triumph is not the marathon I did last weekend, but the fact that I packed my gym bag, left it in my car, and headed straight to the gym after school on Tuesday, instead of taking the 4-20 weeks of "rest" that I usually take around the holidays.

I'm signed up for a half marathon on New Year's Eve. I'm in training.

Honolulu Marathon, 2015

Reverberating Miracle Pudding

When I run, I bear a striking resemblance to a reverberating pudding. I possess a thick, wobbling heft that religiously obeys the bounciest laws of physics with each weighty stride. Most of the time, I feel bad about this. I have visions of a younger self, slimmer, with less percussive footfalls. I have fantasies of a future self, so lean and bendy that when people see me, visions of gazelles involuntarily prance through their heads. Past and future look so good! The present is just depressing.

Part of making sustainable changes means doing some hard re-thinking work. I need to re-think what I can realistically achieve in my future. I need to re-think how I view myself in the present. Stopping myself mid-wallow and re-directing my thoughts toward a positive, productive place is impossible most of the time. But every once in a while, I can do it.

It's unrealistic to become a lithe piece of jerky any time soon; but, I feel like I am well on my way to achieving the status of flan -- still in the pudding genre, but more solid, requiring a firmer shake to elicit a wobble.

From pudding to flan! And why not dream big? Maybe within a year ... mochi status! (Still a bit of squish, but damn tasty.)

I may be a pudding in the present, but I'm a pudding that is running a marathon in four days. That's amazing! How many puddings can do that? I'm like some sort of miracle pudding! Woo!

Self Pity Stew

This has been my week:

Not a shred of stupid optimism, annoying positive attitude, or grating self-motivated pep to be found. And not a hint of training. There was some guilt at first, but by midweek, I had moved beyond feeling bad about not doing anything that even remotely resembled training. I sank nice and heavy into a sticky stew of cold-hearted self pity generously garnished with apathy. And then I floated around in it, relished it, let it seep between my toes, gargled its cloying juices, rubbed it into my face.

I wallowed.

It felt like something in me had completely shut off. Instead of a burning drive to reach a big goal, all I had was a burning drive to eat fries and watch Jessica Jones whose nihilistic world view spoke to me.

My weak little plan was to start fresh on The Weekend. The Weekend is a magical place where everything is possible, where the week's sins are forgiven, and rebirth can be achieved. I didn't do anything this week. It's okay! I'll just jumpstart myself on The Weekend, and launch a whole new life! Reality has yet to bear this out. Reality is so lame.

Thankfully, my dad texted me on Friday night: "Run tmrw?" It was the external force I needed. Without that external force, I would have planned on doing a training run, slept in late on Saturday morning,  eaten a leisurely breakfast, read my book for a while, done some mindless internet browsing, watched some Jessica Jones, read some more, eaten lunch, realized it was late enough in the afternoon that I would be running in the dark, and excused myself from running on the grounds of personal safety. Maybe next weekend.

With Dad, it's up and out by 8am. (He wanted 7:30, I negotiated half an hour, which resulted in us still being out running while it rained its hardest the last half hour of our run. Sorry, Dad.)

Much to my delight, and despite not training for a week, I have not lost every strand of muscle fiber in my legs and gained 150 pounds. My bad mind was wrong. It was a great 10-miler. We ran it in the same time that I ran 8 miles last weekend. It made me feel like a runner again.

I have no idea how to not wallow this week. I have no idea how to carry the good juju from this run beyond The Weekend. But right now, I feel worthy of the moniker "Runner," so I'm going to mentally tattoo that identity to my soul, maybe write it in Sharpie on my hand, and do my best to be the thing I am.