Literally. This is what I do now, instead of running in the neighborhood near my work. I got tired of all the dogs that run around loose, and after the incident where 5 Chihuahuas followed me, yapping furiously, I bought a membership to my local county rec center. I didn't like being known as the Pied Piper of Poplar Grove.
So, now I run on an indoor track, round and round and round. This is boring, but tolerable, in light of the Chihuahuas.
Today was the run I had been dreading. I have a little training schedule, torn out of "Cooking Light" about 4 years ago. So I've been at this run before. It's 5 minutes running as fast as I can sustain for that length of time, then walking for 4 minutes. I have to do that 4 times, and each time, My visualizations become more desperate.
First time - I'm a machine! ZZ Top is playing in the spinning class adjacent to the track and I do 5 minutes without any problem. Uh-haw-haw-haw-haaw.
Second time - No more ZZ Top. Depeche Mode just isn't helping much, and anyway all I can hear is my own puffing. I think "I need an iPod." Then I try to imagine that I am just lungs on legs. Just a mobile oxygen processor.
Third time - "Lungs on legs" is starting to notice inconvenient realities, like the fact that my ribs are getting in the way of my breathing and that my butt really still there and needs to come along. I resit gasping "Little Engine That Could" stuff like, "I think I can I think I can", because that would be so embarrassing. I settle for telling myself that all I really have to do is pick my legs up one at a time; gravity will put them down for me.
Fourth time - No rational thoughts left. I'm left with my most stripped down mantra: "Child-birth-hurts-worse. Child-birth-hurts-worse". Just as much fun, but without the sutures.
3 comments:
Stay with it--it gets "easier" (read: more tolerable). It can even get to "fun." Did you run the 5K at the marathon?
Rich
Kate - I have a mantra, too. But I like yours better. I haven't given birth though, so I can't steal it.
My mantra is this: "I've wanted to die more. I've wanted to die more." Its based on how bad I wanted to die when I was running the UAATA 5K in the rain in November.
P.S. Running with an iPod really is incredible. You can get a shuffle fairly cheap.
Having known Kate back when the earth was young & the water was pure (and her mom included an "i" between the "t" and "e" of her name), what she's humbly not including here is that she's been running for a heck of a Looooong time now (not to betray anyone's age:)
It's pretty damn admirable to know someone who's doing something like this for as long as they have.
You go girl! :)
-Hillary S. Foole
Post a Comment