Righting the Good Ship Health and Fitness has proven rocky so far. Mostly due to all the anger and self-recrimination at letting the ship sink so far so fast. I had been doing so well! Worse still was the Sunday a couple weeks ago when I should have been running my first race and instead I was on the couch in Brooklyn, probably eating a Mallomar while watching Supernatural reruns.
It was going to be a great race too! I signed up back in May or June for the inaugural Newport Bridge run. It was a reach from the start; I'd been aiming to be able to run a 5k and the bridge course was 4.2 miles but I really wanted something interesting and RI, a bridge, a water view would have been perfect.
But by October I knew it wasn't going to happen. I slacked off so much in the end of the summer and fall that I couldn't even jog a mile anymore. Also, I'd learned earlier in the summer that the difference between jogging on a treadmill and jogging outside is v a s t. Even when I was able, fairly easily eventually, to jog 30 minutes straight at the gym I could barely manage 5 minutes outside. I know the grade and the terrain and the wind and everything is a factor but I must have been basically standing still on the treadmill. SO HARD.
So I screwed up. I failed. I got in my own way again which apparently is my superpower. Witness the Self Sabotager! Able to begin and abandon good habits with lightning speed!
The only thing to do of course is try again. My new crazy plan is the Runner's World Inaugural Holiday Running Streak (I really like inaugurations?). The idea is that from Thanksgiving through New Year's Day you run at least a mile every day.
I woke up Thanksgiving morning in Rhode Island, pulled on some sweats and jogged down to Fogland. It's a mile and half there, including an enormous hill that has quickly become my new nemesis, and because I am nothing if not practical I left good enough alone and had Chris pick me up instead of trying to jog back (also it was quite cold). I jogged down to the beach every morning that weekend. Back here in Brooklyn I've made it out each day for anywhere from 1.5 to 2 miles. I'll be honest, I'm still following a couch-to-5k program, trying to be able to run outdoors as long as I can at the gym, so it's walk/run intervals but I'm doing it. It's been a week and so far? I'm doing it.
Four and a half weeks to go.
Determination Face