Excuses, Excuses, Excuses, AKA The Great Struggle

I didn’t run for two weeks.  My son-in-law was having surgery and my sister was coming to dogsit for them while I was at the hospital, which was in another town (excuse).  I had to clean house and get ready for her visit (excuse) and then I was out of town for a few days (excuse) and then I was back visiting with my sister (excuse).  So obviously, I just didn’t have time to run (excuse).

When I decided to get back on my running schedule, I was dreading it because I was not feeling in the least bit motivated anymore (excuse).  In fact, I had lost my Motivation over those past two weeks and couldn’t find It anywhere.  I’m sure that if I had lifted the couch cushion It would have been cowering underneath.  But since I had turned into a couch potato, getting up to look wasn’t really an option. 

In the course of two weeks I had taken one step forward and two months back.  My first day back was a fiasco.  I couldn’t run 2½ miles without stopping any longer.  Actually, I could barely run ¼ mile before I had to stop and rest.  (Sigh).  It sucks getting old. 

When I’m not eating properly, all of that delicious bad food works like a drug in my system.  It’s like a chemical reaction.  Anything heavy, sweet, or high in fat puts me into a food-induced coma that inhibits me from getting off the couch.   My head feels fuzzy and heavy, and I can’t think properly. 

And then it was Thanksgiving.  You just can’t eat right at Thanksgiving (excuse).  Seriously!  And of course, Christmas is coming, too.  Lots of fattening meals and candy, so I can’t possibly diet or watch what I eat at Christmas either (excuse). 

What really hit me this time (when I came out of my coma) is that I realized it was always going to be like this.  Even if I lose all the weight and exercise my butt off, I’m still going to have this lifelong struggle, AKA The Great Struggle.  In my weakened food stupor state, The Great Struggle was really depressing me. 

Luckily, I’m a very stubborn woman.  So what! if The Great Struggle was trying to get me down?  So what! if what I was trying to do is really hard?  And So what! if I don’t live up to my own expectations?  Even if I’m not very good at it, I can still keep going and do the best that I can. 

It’s not whether I succeed or not (yeah, right!), but whether I at least tried. 

Here is a quote that my daughter gave me: “Dead last finish”, beats “did not finish”, which greatly trumps “did not start.”

~author unknown. 

That about says it all!

And now that my Pity Party fell through, I think I’ve actually done something pretty amazing this year.  I’ve been running three times per week since last January.  I’ve really only missed three weeks out of the last fifty two.  I figure that I’ve probably run somewhere between 300 – 400 miles this year (I’ll have the exact number by the end of the year), as opposed to the zero miles that it could have been. 

I really have done alright. 

Just sayin’. 

P.S.  Yesterday’s run went pretty well – I’ve nearly caught up!