Game On

I didn't "forget" to post Saturday's running update entry. It's actually all typed up and ready to go. Just by the time I got home from spending time with family for a photoshoot and then hanging out with my friend Jen devouring ridiculous amounts of Chinese food, I just didn't have it in me to post. 

Despite my excitement over all this running and all the encouragement from friends and family, last week was a bit of a struggle. And the start of this week has been a total disaster. More emotionally than physically. 

Physically, I'm doing o.k. with my runs. I still find myself comparing my runs to others: I feel like I should be able to run faster or that my distance is pretty wimpy because someone else did more. But, yesterday I was able to run a mile and a half with only a brief stop to fix my shoelaces. I can still comfortably do 2 miles and am slowing adding to that distance. I'm still going strong with the run streak (although that may be coming to an end--I'm fully prepared to admit that I may have done too much too quickly) and this week should see the start of Week 6 of the C25k program. 

Emotionally, though, I'm a mess. 

I think I mentioned a few weeks ago that there were a string of days when I ended my runs in tears.  Yesterday morning I had another one of those weird breakdowns--lots of tears, lots of sobbing, lots of second guessing myself. Lots of wondering what my real motivation is behind my running: is it really what I keep telling people it is about--because I've always wanted to run? Or is is worse than that--is it really because I'm hoping that it will make someone else take notice?

I'm struggling with waves of self doubt which at this point, I thought would be going away. Rather than getting better though, they seem to be getting worse. Some mornings I spent a ridiculous amount of time talking myself out of staying in bed. It would just be so much easier to say "Well, I tried. But it didn't work" but when it comes down to it, very few of those feelings actually have to do with my running. It's just easy to blame it all on running because running can be hard. And to make it easy, I just have to stop. I can't, however, make myself stop caring whether or not a certain someone cares for me back. Which is, if I am totally honest, what all of this is about.

When I started my blog, I made a conscious decision about what I was and wasn't going to write about. Me not writing about being sad over a guy was near the top of that list. It's easy to do if that feeling kept itself to just that one area of your life. We all know that's not how things work though. And being alone, with an open road and only your thoughts is bound to bring all of those feelings to the surface. And that seems to be what is happening.

So now I have to figure out how to work through it--really work through it. I need to figure out how to get back to that place I was at a few weeks ago where I felt like I could take on the world. But maybe figure out how to take on a small sliver instead of the whole thing all at once.