Fear is Fear

Well, my little Self-Pep-Talk did the trick yesterday.  And the shopping, that helped too.  :-)  I changed clothes in the comfy bathroom at work and sneaked out a little before 5pm.  I was one of the first to arrive at the meetup spot for our group run, but I didn't want to give myself any chance of bailing out on my plans.  I knew what the weather had been like this winter when I signed up and paid my registration, and I'll be damned if I'm going to waste a single week of this training program!  There may be weeks when work keeps me away on Wednesday nights, but that wasn't this week.  Still, there was always a chance I'd sneak home, right up until I walked in the doors at the meeting place!  I would have felt SO LOUSY if I'd skipped it, and I knew it.  Sometimes I just have to remind myself of the consequences of my choices.

This was my plan.  Thanks for the inspiration, Distant Runners!

A quick rundown on the workout:  Many people did, in fact, stay home last night due to the extreme temperatures, so my group consisted of two leaders, Georgeanne and Kay, both of whom I ran with last year, myself, and a new (to me) runner named Susan.  The plan was for a three-mile interval run.  The way this played out was a one-mile warm up run, followed by three rounds of "6 minutes at goal pace / 2 minutes recovery."  In my current condition, the two minutes of recovery means walking, but it's intended to be a fast run broken up by short periods of slow jog.  This is something I practiced on the treadmill a few weeks ago and I'm working on it.  I'm used to taking those walk breaks and would like to phase them out.  Mentally, I am not sure it's really good for me.  Physically, there's nothing wrong with it, but I go to them too easily and I need to break that habit, walk only when it's absolutely necessary.

Aaaanyway, my calves were really tight during the first mile, which is typical for me, but they usually loosen up after about 8 minutes.  Last night we finished the first mile in about 13 minutes or so and they were still really tight.  I'm attributing that to the extreme cold.  I was wearing two pairs of pants, but I wasn't exactly toasty.  I walked a few minutes before we started the intervals, and kept up as best I could with our planned pace of 11:30 during the intervals.  I think George ran us at 5 minutes instead of 6.  She mentioned that seemed like a really long 5 minute interval!  Once we finished the intervals we had about a mile left to go and did a slow jog back.  All told, 42 minutes and we did 3.12 miles.  Just what I had in mind, not fast, just fabulous, as they say.

There wasn't much ice on the trail, but once the sun was down, even with my flashlight, I found myself feeling really fearful of slipping on the ice.  By then we were on the return, so we pretty well knew where the ice patches were, but I was having a real mental battle over this ice thing.  At once point I started thinking this was my brain's new version of "I can't do this!" - like that sabotaging part of my mind had found a new way to do its thing and trip me up - psychologically speaking - and hold me back.  Perhaps for the moment it realized that "I can't do this" wasn't going to work, not tonight anyway, and it chose another way.  

Ah, RunnersWorld, sometimes you really knock it outta the park.

Surely my own brain doesn't work that hard to screw up its own plans... does it?  I'm an accountant; not a psychiatrist so what the hell do I know.  

Fear is fear, I guess.  Fear of change, fear of pain, fear of falling, fear of failing, fear of the unknown (to me, that's the ice for sure! Ice is tricksy.)  Perhaps I'm just beginning to recognize what fearful thoughts I have.  That'll be the first step in learning to combat them.

Found this on the Hunting Happiness Project Facebook page.

Tonight I have a group fitness class scheduled with my weight loss challenge group, but it doesn't start until 7:15pm, which is awfully late for me.  I'll have to find a way to combat the urge to bail on that one as well, but for more practical reasons.  When does one EAT when you have a class that late?  Usually I have dinner at 6:30 or so, which is entirely too close to the start time for the class.  So I can't do that, but I can't show up hungry either - that's a recipe for disaster.  And I hate the idea of eating dinner so late - it'll be close to 9pm by the time I get home.  Then again, the class has a pretty good name - Body Attack! - with an exclamation point.  I'm intrigued... I'll probably find a way to make it work.