Friday, May 7, 2010

Another thing I have learned in my efforts to run: Patience


Persist and endure: I am very familiar with these words. In order to accomplish any goal you need sheer will power but also the patience to allow your body to strengthen itself and your lungs to slowly adapt. You will not see immediate results but mentally you will feel strong and capable. Sometimes I try a new path or set out for a longer run only to race back to my car in order to configure the new distance. The extra mile sometimes feels like the extra miles. So when I discovered that my victory lap was more like the victory ten feet I felt discouraged. Yesterday, I finally took the new neighborhood for a spin. I said "Hell, I am just going to run for an extra 15 minutes." It is not the biggest trophy but its shiny enough for me to think that I might just add an additional mile plus to the two I usually run in 20 min. My mind calculated 20 minutes of running=2miles so then 35 must equal at least 3. Wrong. I was adding distance but I did not figure that with every new distance you are increasing your training. My body was not acclimated to 3 miles at a ten minute pace. My grand additional 15 minutes (which felt like climbing Mt. Everest backwards) was only 2.5 miles. Granted, I now have to wait to cross city streets instead of just heading down a single path without stops. But mentally I still felt the pain of not running 3 miles in an allotted time. It has since chewed my insanity to pulp. This is were patience enters. Each mile is a bench mark and each additional minute on the road is not wasted. They are the words of encouragement that you can repeat the distance again. For me every run is a personal best-if I did it once I can do it again. I hear the wind blowing outside the window and I can not help to think that I am blessed. Maybe next time I will ignore my car's mile tracker and learn to be satisfied with the sound of my feet hitting the pavement...and use the timer on my watch to accurately time myself (I am not perfect...insanity lurks).

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