THE VOICES IN MY HEAD

This morning at 5.20 am it was me and the pavement for stage 2 of my return to running plan. This is a bit of a side goal to weight training 3 times / week. I guess you could call it goal 2a or maybe it should just be goal number 4. Whatever. I’m aiming to run again but limit my times to 30 or 40 minutes max.  I know my body just can cope with the long runs anymore despite them being my favourites.

I headed out and it was a typically cold morning. In stage 2 my plan is to walk 1 song, then jog 2. The last couple of weeks it was 1 song of each. Luckily my first song was a long one at over 5 minutes so I got a nice warm up walk. At the risk of sounding like a whinger, my hips have been aching badly lately, the pain has returned to my ITBs and needless to say my lower back is always tight, adding to the soreness. Then to add icing to the cake, I had leg DOMS as well.

The voice in my head was shouting at me “Don’t run today. You’re so sore. You won’t be able to do it anyway. Just walk. It’s safer and easier.” And a part of me REALLY wanted to say “Ok, you’re right. A walk will do.” But deep down I knew a walk WOULDN’T do. If I conceded defeat I would have another day of getting up early and wasting the time with ineffective training. Like Peter said to me a couple of weekends ago “What’s the point of getting up so early if you don’t make your training count.”

 And I thought back to a passage I read yesterday from Craig Harper’s Fattitude: “Sometimes we don’t really want to make an effort; we just want to look like we are making an effort. It’s a good way to get people off our back.” Errrr …. guilty. So I sucked it up and I jogged my 2 songs then took a walk recovery for 1 song and repeated the cycle 4 times. I also stayed the whole 40 minutes. No short cuts.

At the end of it I was pooped but I felt great and more importantly I felt great about not skimping on the quality of my workout. Have you been guilty of skimping on your effort but hiding it behind a façade of “yeah I’m putting in the effort”? It can be with either exercise or diet.

Cheers all

M