A local columnist, otherwise intelligent and sane, writes about his cats every couple of months. For those of us who don't have the cat gene, he prefaces them with a "Cat Column" warning, so we know to stay away. I think I will henceforth do that with running posts. But I think they'll probably be popping up more than every couple of months.
I have discovered over the past few weeks that my attitude has as much to do with my athletic performance as does my body. And since I have much more control over my attitude than I do over the whims of my aging body, I've decided to start leaning on that a bit more.
When I ran in high school and college, I knew a couple of things above all else: Other People Are Faster Than Me, and Exercise is Hard. As you might expect, keeping these facts at the fore of my running self-conversation didn't do a lot for my motivation or performance.
At 46, the things at the fore: I'm Way Faster Than the Vast Majority of 46yos in the World, and If I Don't Exercise I Get Fat and My Back Hurts. This change in mental chatter has changed things dramatically. And dang, even if I'm a lot pokier than I was when I was 16, I'm having much more fun. And my times are improving like crazy, which is very gratifying. I found a race set for June 1, and start an 8 week training course on Monday to improve my 5K times as well as up my distance. And as ridiculous as it sounds, I'm just as excited as can be about this.
Post-run today: I made pancakes, (yes, from scratch) for my children (just to prove that I could), have yet more laundry to do, will finally paint the closet doors in the family room and finish touch-ups, and then will try to finish up the first half of the quilt. Fridays off: woo HOO!
No comments:
Post a Comment