In the Throes of the Winter Blahs

I survived the holidays.

We'll just start there. I survived.

Now I'm not saying the I had a horrible holiday season. Not by a long shot. Sure, the drive to Columbus to visit family was almost ridiculously painful. I think we managed to choose the absolutely worst days possible to make the drive, turning a nine and a half hour drive into 15 hours of white-knuckle steering. It was great spending time with family and catching up with some friends. But the sleeping in.... ah, the sleeping in....

While I was away, I learned my first real hard lesson about how important it is for me to do everything in my power to not miss training days. With the busy holiday season looming closer and closer, I neglected swimming and my newly established running program the last five or six days before hitting the road.

Determined to be good and get back on the horse, I jumped on my parents' treadmill early Christmas Eve morning to continue on with the walk to run program I had started a few weeks earlier. And the confusion set in.

Now, let me tell you that I have never once given any consideration to my preferences of treadmill features. Not even when my husband and I purchased ours several years ago. It was more for him than for myself. You got on it and ran. This made you sweat, which we have already established that, until very recently, I did not enjoy. I had no real intention of using it. At least not then, anyway.

Staring at the controls on my parents' treadmill I tried to find the button to press that would start me at my 3 MPH warm up pace. But it wasn't there. Wait, in fact, I couldn't figure out how to get it started at all. After a couple of minutes of searching, I realized that once you activated the master switch, you had to manually adjust your speed with the little up and down arrows.

Manual. Hmmmm. Okay, I can deal with that. I drive a manual transmission car.

My warm up went okay, but then it was time for me to kick it up to a run.

Do you know that to go from a 20 minute mile to a 12 minute mile, you have to hit that little button at least 20 times? When I say at least 20 times, it's because I've learned that, when you're really tired from running, the little button becomes less responsive as you shift to a lower speed. Maybe I was just beat and my hand-eye coordination was off, but I swear I had to hit the down arrow 50 times to get to an acceptable pace that would keep my from falling off the back of the belt.

20 minutes into my 50 minute workout and I was done.

I was pooped.

Finished.

Bummed.

I hadn't had a really bad work out at this point.

I did get back on the horse. I had a great run the next morning before the Christmas festivities could start. I learned my lesson.

I didn't get anymore treadmill or swim time before we traveled back to Iowa.

I've been actively persuing my running training while sadly neglecting my swimming.

Maybe it's because I feel lost without the structure of my swim lessons (which thankfully start back up in a couple of days). Maybe it's because I have an awesome, one touch speed treadmill waiting for me just across the hall from my bedroom. I don't know. I think I'm just in the throes of the winter blahs.

I need to add spinning into the training mix in the next week or so. I'm trying to figure out how to fit it all in without feeling like I've given my life over to the sport. Or maybe that's the point of this whole exercise.

Running this past Sunday was a good/bad experience.

Physically, it was great. I moved sucessfully to the next step in the program and increased my speed a bit. It was the longest walk/run workout to date. I should have been thrilled with my progress considering that I was the one in gym class to do just about anything to get out of the mile run fitness test.

But I wasn't thrilled.

Doubt set in.

I questioned myself for the first time since setting out on this journey. What the hell am I doing? Am I completely insane? I am not an athlete. I am a squishy couch potato who may very well drown in June.

I pushed through my running alternating between these thoughts and my mantra:

I am pain.

I am endurance.

I am defiance.

I will not fail.