Day 2 - a second run outdoors and another day packed with anxiety, excuses not to go, and an extremely red face.
It was unusually warm today. Not just warm, but also a touch humid. As much as I crave the warmer months, East Coast summers are brutal. Humidity is the devil’s work and those who complain about heat on the West Coast have no idea what they are talking about. Humidity turns my brain into gel and makes me seriously consider things like shaving my head and moving to the North Pole. Again, an interesting headspace when I am sure I would be hideous bald and don’t like the cold.
I wanted to get Reggie out of the house so I decided to use the early afternoon for a long walk with him. I returned with sweaty roots and my t-shirt glued to my back. This was the beginning of an internal dialogue, lasting hours, on why I should not run today. It being 80 degrees and slightly humid outside tail spinned me into a million other reasons why today wasn’t a good day to run.
It’s Sunday.. “a day of rest.” Maybe I should make this my rest day and not workout at all.
Maybe I should run every other day to avoid injury and rest my legs.
It’s probably not good on my lungs to stress them so hard so often. Maybe I should chill.
There’s people working on their lawns, taking walks, hanging outside… I don’t want them to see me.
You get the picture. It’s interesting to me just how anxious I was about running today after having such a high following yesterday’s run. One might think (one being me) that I would remember how good it felt and those annoying excuses would melt away easily. Yet, I somehow was even more anxious today than I was yesterday.
After a quick power nap, I woke up and convinced myself to go. While I did not listen to all the rules from yesterday (more on that in a minute), I did make sure to time the run as the sun was almost set. In fact, by the time I was half way through the run, the sky was perfectly light without the sun beating on me and the air had cooled down to an almost perfect temperature.
My running periods didn’t seem as strong today, but not too far off from yesterday. I’m pretty sure that having just risen from a nap and not eating anything before the run played a part. I didn’t skip any of the run sessions on the app and even ventured into a new route today to see how it compared to yesterday. Today’s route didn’t have as many (or as steep) downhill sections which was a bummer for my inner Tinkerbell (the flying feeling…. Get it?), but it made me feel prouder having completed the run since I had to push harder through it.
Things I did not learn from yesterday were to bring tissues (I know… how the hell could I forget them again?!) and to create a better playlist BEFORE heading out. I also wasn’t in the most comfortable outfit. Like most of my clothing right now, a lot of my leggings are too big for me. It’s the greatest and worst thing about actively losing weight. You don’t want the XL leggings to be the right size, but you also don’t want to spend a ton of money on a new wardrobe when you still have weight to lose. Therefore, I spent an annoying amount of time pulling up my leggings throughout my 30 minute trip.
Unfortunately there were more people encountered on this run than the one from yesterday…and no cute dogs which was the real loss. There was even a moment where I was sort of in stride with a couple walking which panicked me enough that I started running before the app told me to just to get away from them. It may be forever and ever until I am okay with people seeing me run. I may never lose touch with the inner voice that tells me they are staring and judging me, but the great thing about running is that those thoughts leave me almost immediately after they come to me. Because I am so focused on trying to keep up my breathing and keeping up a decent pace, I don’t have time to linger on the outside thoughts that arise.
Speaking of thoughts, I realized as I was returning to the house that I could not recount much of anything that I thought about during my run. I hope no one reports me to the DMV to have my license revoked for saying this, but have you ever driven somewhere and all the sudden realized that you cannot recall a moment of the drive? I mean this to the point where you start to question if lights were green and other cars were even on the road with you. That is the same feeling I had completing today’s run. It’s like my mind is so engulfed in the moment of running that I either cannot think of much else or I am not thinking of anything deeply enough to remember it only minutes later. This might be one of my favorite things about running thus far.
My lungs still burned, I sweat my ass off again, I was embarrassingly red when I got home and my feet hurt a bit tonight. All this to say, I feel really good about the run and am grateful to the voice sitting within my subconscious (see May 1 2020) who keeps telling me to go run even when my brain is screaming that I shouldn’t.
I look forward to them battling it out again tomorrow and even though it will probably be a close fight, I’m putting my money on my subconscious.
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