After I was done spewing the decaying shit in my brain to the O.G. Mindbender last week, we were talking casually, and I mentioned my somewhat steady improved attempts at running and how much of a mental rub and a tug it’s been for me. She was complimentary, but as with many therapists, I could tell she wasn’t extremely impressed.
She wasn’t rude or anything; she’s a 69-year-old woman who admittedly only ever runs if she’s about to miss a plane, and after six-ish years as her client, we know each other pretty well. With that, I wasn’t even done talking, and I could tell she was already thinking ahead.
Knowing my reactions to some challenges in the past, when I finished, she asked, “Have you thought about how you might react when you do face an obstacle, or you’ve stopped seeing the steady improvements?”
I explained to her, basically, what I’ve covered here before; the running aspect of my near-daily lumbers is all new, and as I’ve repeated in nearly every post over the last month and a half, I DON’T RUN! So, this is all a sweaty gravy to me, and I’m confident that I can deal with seeing slower numbers, having a bad day, or, dogs forbid, another injury.
I stand by my statement, and as you may have seen in my recent posts about polishing turds, unlike my ingrained thought process from the age of 101 to my 50s, I am now able to find the positives, even when things aren’t going well or improvements aren’t happening as quickly.
I have to say, even with the words above and recent successes in the turd polishing department, I really didn’t expect the heat and humidity to affect me like they did this week. And after today’s “poor” effort, I’ve needed to dig deep into my brain to stave off the internal dialogue that comes absolutely second nature to me:
“What made you think you could run at your age?”
“Can you imagine how stupid you looked!”
“You’re too damn fat; that’s why you can’t run!”
But I won’t do that because I’m learning. And not just learning to run but also continuing to learn to rewire my brain from literally years of self-loathing and abusive comments.
It’s supposed to be hard. If it wasn’t hard, everyone would do it. It’s the hard that makes it great.
– Jimmy Dugan
That quote from the movie A League of Their Own was a mantra of sorts for me when I started doing endurance mountain bike races. And this week, I thought about it again for the first time in a long while. And it still rings true.
Running is hard for me. Why would it be easy? I’ve never done it before in earnest or for this long. It’s going to hurt. And as you may have noticed from my receding hairline and sagging jowls, I am NOT young anymore. And while I’ve walked, hiked, and rode my bike in everything from intense heat to frigid cold, I have absolutely NO experience with running in those temps.
And even though I said I’d limit my time comparing runs, I realized the first 5-mile lumber/run I did just over a month ago was nearly the same exact course, and I was 5 minutes faster today. Not to mention, today I did a harder climb; the temps were over 10˚ warmer, and the humidity was over 90% compared to virtually none a month ago. There were also several limbs and trees down today from yesterday afternoon’s thunderstorm that needed to be avoided. In other words, it’s not a setback at all; it’s just part of the process and a chance to learn and become stronger. Shit happens, and I swear I’ll stop comparing runs, because every run, hike, or lumber is different in its own way.
Yes, inching my way toward actual running is damn hard, and there are and will be setbacks. But what is even harder for me is learning to be positive and caring to myself because, just like running, I’ve never done it before and had limited role models in that department.
Unlike that quote from Jimmy Dugan above, for everyone’s sake, I wish that bettering one’s mental health was easy and that everyone could do it. It’s HARD. But just like running, all you/I can do is put one foot in front of the other, deal with the setbacks, and keep learning from the mistakes because it’s way too easy to give up and be miserable.
And with that, I gotta go. It’s Wednesday, and that means an afternoon appointment with the O.G. Mindbender. Hmm, I wish I had something to talk about.
Later.