Saturday, April 21, 2012

Battling my inner Negative Nancy


Still catching you up on March and some of April...
I ran my first post baby race on 10 March. It was the Shamrock Shuffle and I managed to knock it out in 34:14, that is an 11 minute pace people! With a baby that was under four months old, I felt like I was doing something!  Plus you see that little leprechaun I ran with? Yeah, I had to DRAG him for about a mile... There was a lady that fell behind us with a basset hound and little Gizmo decided that he wanted to go back and play with the damn thing. Talk about an upper body workout!
In other news, we are running a ½ marathon in less than a month.  We’ve been training for about four weeks so far and our farthest run has been 8 miles. We’ll run ten this coming Sunday. I have to admit that I don’t remember it being this painful the last time I trained for a ½ marathon. I am sure that it was just as difficult but the added weight from pregnancy, the lactating breasts, the change in body composition, and having not run for a year have made this reintroduction a little daunting.

I have incorporated speed work throughout the week during my short runs and am happy to say that on I am running faster than even before I had the baby (at least on the treadmill). I did happen to run my fastest 5k the other day with Travis, though it wasn’t an actual event, just clocked on my Garmin. You see, I am a 10+ min miler… I am a “slow” runner.  Because I am so slow, I have had a running battle in my mind about whether or not I can actually call myself a runner. (No pun intended) I know that I am not the only person to have this inner battle, Callie has written about the same topic. However, I have come to realize that I AM A RUNNER, I manage to get off my couch when I don’t want to, I put on my running shoes even when I’d rather be eating cake, I hit the pavement and move my feet, and I am doing more than the person that doesn’t do it. I am not going to win any races and probably won’t win any awards (though I love to collect those medals, and I’ll wear it like I won the race), but I am going to win the battle against my lazy self. I will not let that inner voice that says, “you aren’t a real runner, you can’t complete the distance, who are you kidding?” take over. Nope, I am going to beat that girl down because who likes a Negative Nancy? NOT ME!!!

Do you have to battle your inner Nancy?

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