“It is your reaction to adversity, not the adversity itself ,that determines how your life’s story will develop.”- Dieter F. Uchtdorf
A definite low week.
Week 10 brought both the highs and lows of my journey and crammed them side by side, day after day. I feel like I’ve been riding a physical, mental, and emotional roller coaster all week. Because of the health pandemic? because of the “stay at home” order? I’m pretty sure there isn’t one single box that I could check to answer why, but I do know that it’s some odd combination of the many different things happening in each passing day.
Monday brought some sort of a “high” in the simple context that the sun was shinning and the wind wasn’t whipping at 100mph as it often does in southern, rural Minnesota. For my fellow Gusties who think the wind at the top of the hill is treacherous, why don’t you just take a little visit to Sleepy Eye and you’ll find that our hill top “Gusts” aren’t really all that bad. I did a decent 4 miles parading laps throughout my small town. Without stopping you might ask? I WISH. I made it about 2.5 miles and broke down to walk for a short minute and continue on my endeavor. I then, as most Minnesotans do when the sun is shining, tried to be outside as much as possible, so I proceeded to go on a walk with my mom and sister, and then finished the night with a bike ride around the lake with my sister and dad. A pretty good Monday.
I almost forgot!!!! Monday when I got home from my run, I had a package waiting for me at the door…now, I’m a rather broke college student, so packages with my name on them don’t show up very often. My new running shoes had arrived!!! Like any excited person with new shoes, obviously I wore them on our walk AND the bike ride cause, you know, why not? Have to break them in somehow right?!
Typically my Tuesday’s don’t involve any running because I have to give myself days off from it in order to mentally be able to get the mileage in that I’m supposed to. EXCEPT, when there are new shoes involved, that rule becomes a broken rule :). I tested ’em out on the most perfect spring day and just did a quicker mile than I typically would (about a 9:30) and then walked around soaking up the sun and threw a few sprints in between blocks when I felt like it.
Wednesday was the start of feeling low. I’m not sure if it was the change in weather or what, but I had absolutely no energy to run, besides the fact that the whipping wind had made its grand return once again, creating an even more hopeless energy for my running future. Nevertheless, I didn’t get a run in on Wednesday, which was supposed to be another 4 mile day, so I settled for a walk with my mom.
Thursday repeated Wednesday with crappy weather and wind…surprise surprise. Day 2 of no running, settled for a below average instagram cardio workout and a walk on our 20 year old treadmill until I couldn’t bear it any longer.
Friday was finally decent weather again, so I managed to pull myself together for what was supposed to be my Wednesday 4 miler. It ended up being about the same as Monday: 2.5 miles before a rest and then a few long intervals to finish up and hit 4. Feeling annoyed with the weather, disappointed in my effort, and overall frustrated by the circumstances that we have no control over, I had the mentality of giving up on this whole half marathon training thing.
Saturday I was in a funk. Again, not sure why this week brought me on a roller coaster ride, but Saturday was tough for me. I couldn’t find much positivity within myself, and didn’t have energy to do any of the things that normally make me feel better, or productive at least. My family is completely aware of my running journey and has been such a great support system for me when I’m feeling like crap about it. I told my mom and sister that I would try and muster up the energy to do an evening run since it was decent enough outside to postpone the run that long. We decided it would be good for all of us to go on a walk, so that we did.
I have been begging my sister to join me for my shorter runs basically since I’ve been at home, and I have never succeeded to trick her into thinking it would be “fun” to run together lol. Until Saturday…she came up to me and said “Fine, I’ll run with you, but only a mile”, I was THRILLED!! And a good friend reminded me this week, that even 2 miles is better than none, so sure shit I took her up on the offer to do one mile together:)
The run didn’t go quite like I thought it would hahahaha. My mom chose to bike with us since she has been biking with me a lot lately, so I anticipated a nice enjoyable one mile run with the fam without any troubles etc. I was just a little wrong lol. Emma is a headphones girl so by default, we both ran with headphones in. Periodically I would just peak over at her and mom to see how everyone appeared to be feeling, we were about half way and so far so good!
We turned the last corner of our run that we had mapped out, which meant we had about .25 left to go until we reached a mile…I took a peak over at my sister and boy did she look miserable. Like I’m a red faced type of workout person, but her face was even more red than mine gets!! Not to mention the “I hate you and I hate this” look that was painted all over her face lol, I couldn’t help but laugh inside my head (if you have siblings, you for sure understand this). Then, all of a sudden, Emma was no longer running next to me, so I turned around as I continued to jog, and she had given up. While I know this feeling VERY, VERY well, I really wanted her to just finish it out with me, especially because I knew she could! After 30 seconds of me cheering her on from across the street and my mom joining in on the fun to add in some cheers, she put the headphones back on and we set out to finish the remaining .20 miles. We made it about another tenth of a mile and this time she quit for good, no seriously, like I kept going since we only had a tenth left, but Emma took a quick seat on the curb and proceeded to tell mom about the pain in her side and stomach…all I could think was “oh this is just great, what have I done” (hand to forehead).
After a few minutes, she decided she could walk the remaining distance back home, so I ran and she walked with my mom. About halfway between where the breakdown happened and our house is my dads house. So, I decided to stop at his house and wait for them to catch up (mostly so I could tell him the story hahaha, but also cause it’s more fun to do things together so I thought I would just wait for them at this point).
A few minutes later they caught up, and by this time Emma was completely fine again-and she actually was laughing about her little melodramatic scene, too, after all, it was quite a show hahaha. She even insisted that we run back home the rest of the distance together (probably like .30), so we did! So, instead of an 8 mile run, which is what my training program suggested for week 10, I took joy in the first sister run in our history, an entire family bike ride, and game night.
The start of week 11 has now eclipsed. Per my schedule it should have kicked off with a 4.5 miler this morning, but with a snow covered town accompanied by whipping wind, you already know that didn’t happen. Instead, a new instagram workout took its place with a walking session on the treadmill. If this whole training thing is actually going to somewhat stay on track, I really, REALLY, need to find the gusto within to start doing longer runs, otherwise I can kiss this season of training goodbye.
I hope you all had an Easter filled with joy and found hope in the little things, I know we sure tried to here!
Here’s to hoping for a better tomorrow!
…and days filled with sunshine instead of snow, and calm spring breeze instead of a whipping winter wind.
xoxo
Josie's Journey 