Running Back to Me
So here I am, late again to my blog post, but that’s OK because I promise to make it up to y’all with a “double-feature” this month! Life has been a little hectic, to put it nicely, and somehow September lasted 2 weeks and here we are, already in October! I’ve been in the midst of planning our wedding celebration, building a new home, taking care of a wild & crazy 16 month old, and catering to a very particular 6 year old pup. Crazy feels like an understatement. All the while, I picked now to start actually working through some of my mental and physical health. Impeccable timing. However, extremely fitting for this specific post.
Back in June this year, I was sitting on the beach with my husband and started to think about how I’d like to start running again. The thing is, I absolutely love to run. Always have. However, I get in these lulls where the last thing I want to do is run.
That evening I received this alert from the Nike Run App about this beta program that they’re offering only to select users to try as training towards a half marathon. Clearly this is a sign from the universe, right?? So I quickly log in to see if I was selected and I was!! Yayy!!! This is the kick in the pants I need to get going again. I’ve never run a half marathon and running a “full blown” marathon is on my bucket list (specifically the Disney World one, might I add) - so one step closer, right? All things start out well, I’m running, I’m cruising, getting myself up to 10 miles in one run, no stopping - feeling really good about myself. Then smack. It all just comes to a screaming halt as if I just ran myself right into a brick wall that appeared out of nowhere. Now, I didn’t actually sign up for a half marathon to end this training with because while I was running in the beginning, I was seeing soooo many mental barriers of mine being broken down that I didn’t want to lessen that progress by running just for one cause - to finish a race. I probably should have predicted that with or without the race, I’d still end up stopping before I was finished with the entire program (given my past with running), but that’s neither here nor there haha. It literally felt like all of a sudden one morning, my body could not and would not get up to run. I lacked ALL motivation. I could do one or two runs, here and there, but they lacked the clarity or the mindfulness that I was gaining so early on in this program! What happened??
To this day I am not currently running. And it’s not exactly by choice either. I literally have 4 more weeks left in my program and I cannot bring myself to finish them. I just lack all motivation! And before anyone starts spewing “fear of failure” or even “fear of finishing” - I’ve already dissected this mentality 6 ways from Sunday and I’ve come up with nothing - zilch - nada. Here I was making so much ground mentally, physically, emotionally, and I could. not. finish. What is that!? AND this is my first realization that it’s a repeated pattern - I’ve just never had a training program looming over me to show me how many times it’s been repeated. I want to run. Some days I wake up thinking “I could run right now”, but like in those cartoons - the running shoes at the door grow further and further away.
The conclusion I’ve come to is that there is some bigger road block in my mind that is preventing me from enjoying running after a certain point - and our minds simply have no motivation to do something we don’t enjoy. Sure, we can force it, but then it becomes work. And I never ever want running to become work. I can make all the physical hurdles I want, but if I don’t trudge through that mental block, my feet ain’t goin' nowhere.
I actually first created the subject for this post when I was about 2 months into the program. I felt as though I truly was running back to me. I was breaking through postpartum depression, my body was showing me it still held capabilities that I could tackle pre-pregnancy, my mind would go quiet for a bit - I was becoming me again - all through running. Which sounds almost magical. And I wish I could sit here typing away about this magical journey I’ve endured and how I’m “fixed”, but that simply didn’t turn out to be the case. No matter how hard I tried to will it so. I needed help.
Through all my dissections of what’s truly going on, I recently started the venture to seek out a therapist. Now, if anyone has been through therapy before, you know that it is all about the connection. You can have a great therapist, but if you don’t feel connected or you feel as though you’re not being heard - it can all fall flat real quick. To the point where you’re just sitting there trying to find things to talk about - thinking “hmm. I must be alright now!” - leaving the session feeling decent, but not amazing. Then you fall flat on your face a few weeks, months, years later and think “what the heck!?”. It was your therapist. You’re simply not going to reveal yourself to someone you don’t truly ‘vibe’ with and that’s just human nature. Nothing against the therapist nor yourself. So after many, many months and trials - I find someone who I feel may be able to help. I haven’t started running again, but the shoes don’t seem so far away now. Just through my first few sessions - there is absolutely a mental block that I can’t keep ignoring. It’s like that silly “We’re Going On a Bear Hunt” song - I can’t go under it, I can’t go over it, I can’t go around it - I’ve gotta go through it. And it’s hard work. You wouldn’t ignore a broken arm and just hope that if you ignore it, it’ll fix itself - right? So why do we do that for mental health? Why has it taken me so long to get here? More importantly, why do I feel ashamed to admit I have mental health problems?
I thought running back to me would be me physically running back to this physique I desired that would somehow cure all my woes. Ehh…wrong! (buzzer sound for effect) The funny thing is, I knew it all along. I knew what I needed, I just wouldn’t accept it. So, if you’re in need of acceptance - consider this a big old hug telling you that you got this. You’re not broken, you’re just finally holding up the mirror and running back to you. (And you’re welcome for the cheese LOL).
