The Extra Mile

I’ve been kinda foundering with my home workouts at times.  I get bored, restless.  I don’t do warmups well.  I can easily get distracted. I stall when it’s time to get going. I’ve been doing hero WODs but that’s only on Mondays. So when a friend suggested I run a mile every day for a month, I grabbed on.  It was a goal to fuel me for the next little while.  Plus, running many miles is part of my goal for this year. Why not?

Then, as part of a fundraiser at my school, I told everyone who registered for a literacy charity race that I would run an extra mile for them.  That in itself was about 20 miles.  Suddenly I had multiple purposes to run each day.

Well, I’m reporting in on Day 26 and I am over it.  The miles get longer and longer.  Ok, so a mile can’t really get longer.  But, I can run it slower.  It can certainly seem longer. I don’t look forward to it. I actually actively dread it.  But, because I am stubborn and hard-headed I am going to get to 30 days.

Why has this become harder?

First, my mornings have gotten more hectic since I am going back into my physical workplace each day.  So, it is a bit of a scramble to add that 15 minutes in after a workout.

Second, I’m annoyed by my speed. A couple of weeks ago friend mentioned that after practicing each day, I should probably be running faster overall.  Honestly, I am not.  My attitude is bad about it.  But when I took on this task it was more about doing it just to have something to do.  My running pace has gotten quicker through my years of fitness, but I’ve never actually concentrated on my pace. It’s just been a side benefit of better overall fitness. So really, in this case, I didn’t have much of a goal beyond completing it.  Not really a very good goal to be honest. I have learned that my goal needs to have a bit more purpose than this one. And a purpose I really desire or believe in.

I guess I didn’t fail but I don’t feel like I succeeded.  And so there’s a lesson about goals in here that I am learning. My fear is failure, but I am still figuring out what failure means and how to embrace it when I need to.  I will finish and know for sure that I am not a daily runner. So I’ve learned that at least.  I like to run twice, perhaps three times a week if I am training for a specific race.  But doing it every day is not something I really enjoy. And if I don’t enjoy it or at the very least feel successful and satisfied when it is done, what’s the point?

Sometimes going the extra mile isn’t all that fun.  But, we do it because we need to, we said we would, because it is the right thing to do, or sometimes because we are just too hard-headed and stubborn to quit.

A few more days and this will be a memory, happily.