Confessions.

In case you don't know, I haven't been doing very well lately.

I won't go into the details of why, but the symptoms are there.  Some of them are odd.  Like I can get up in the morning, however much I might complain about it, and run 4 or 7 or 15 miles, but the thought of bringing in the four 12 packs of soda (shut up, it's not all for me) makes me want to take a nap.  I can't make myself read books, so I refresh facebook and other online amusement over and over even though it's not amusing at all and probably contributing to my malaise.  I put off things that I know are important even though I know I would feel better if I got them done because the thought of actually doing them makes me anxious, and I don't want to be anxious.  Facing my anxiety feels a little like jumping off a cliff.  I don't like that feeling in my belly.

I can't bring myself to talk openly about some of my reasons why I feel this way, so I just keep feeling this way.  I know it's a symptom of my problem to want other people to fix things for me, to make things better and easier, and I know that won't really fix anything, but I still want it.  I want to feel reassured and safe and sure and I know that to some extent I have to find that for myself but I'm scared maybe that I'll find out something I don't want to about myself.  Or something.  I don't know.

I see things in my face and hear things in my voice that I don't want to see or hear.

I took a step today to try to work on fixing it.  I need to figure this out as much for me as for the people around me.  I half deal with things because I'm scared and tentative all the time.

This is not the person that I want to be.  I've worked so hard to get where I am athletically and that has brought a strength to me but sometimes I hide behind the power that I get from that and pretend it's something other than it is.

Today I did two other things that I had been putting off.  They weren't really things that made me anxious--more so like bringing in the 12 packs of soda.  Stuff I think of doing and then delete in favor of sitting and refreshing facebook and hating myself for not reading a book or taking back control of my mind.

My run yesterday was terrible.  It was so hot.  I got out a bit too late and it got so hot...I stopped and started and wanted to just call it off at 10 or 11 miles.  I found sections of road that were shady and ran them up and down a couple of times to cut down on time in the sun.

There were some good parts.  I saw a flat-topped turtle.  At the water fountain by the community center the crepe myrtle was dropping purple confetti on the ground.  The sun at times seemed friendly instead of white-hot.  The couple of times that I found a sprinkler the feeling of the water on my shoulders was something out of heaven, and the breeze after wetting down in the water fountains brought me back to life.

Mostly it was so hard but it made me thing of what people must think when they say they wish they could run but they can't or are so out of shape.  The sweat, the heat, the fatigue, the stopping and starting and stopping and dragging and sheer stubborn refusal to lose the mind-game by skipping the last two miles.  Because that's what it is.  It's not like it's only hard for beginners, and you can drag ass on a half mile run the same way you can drag ass on a 13 mile run.  Would reducing this 13 miler to 11 miles really affect my over-all training---no.  But it would affect my perception of what I can do this time and next time and our perceptions of what we can do are so important.