Oops...

Approximately 10 days after my last post...and good to see THAT resolution really worked. 

But here is a great post (subject to personal taste) that should make up for the lack of blog in your life (if you even noticed I was gone).

Today I set myself a goal. This goal is not to be confused with a new years resolution because as you can tell by the lack of blog posts in 2012...resolutions are stupid. How a resolution differs than a goal is beyond me, and in all actuality may even be synonymous but I digress. 

My goal is to run a half marathon. 

Now, you may be thinking to yourself "Why in the world is she setting herself another goal when she hasn't even hit her weight loss goal yet?"

To you I will retort: "Because I can!" and also: "Setting this running goal for myself will help me focus on exercise which in turn will aid in my ability to get to my goal weight." 

I am not expecting to be able to run a half marathon in the 3 months my new handy-dandy training schedule is showing me. I also should probably specify that I will probably end up walking during a half marathon, especially my first one (holy crap, did I just say first? As in not LAST?!)

Today was my first gym visit since making this goal (I made this goal at breakfast). I got on the treadmill and set off of my first mini-goal: 2 miles. I've done two miles before, but usually that's pretty lofty. Now it's 2 miles out of an eventual 13.1 I will be running. (Ironically, once I got home and looked up this beginners training schedule, the first Tuesday is listed as a 2 mile run day. It's FATE!)

While trundling along on the treadmill (I literally just wrote dreadmill on accident... Freudian slip, perhaps?) I found myself thinking of all the excuses I've used in the past for why I can't run longer distances.

I'm just not built like a runner

I have bad knees from all those years of catching

Those ear buds never stay in my ears 

I'm stuck in phase 1

Hearing those excuses in my head made me realize that my ability to run a marathon completely laid within my brain. I have strong legs, two feet, a fully functioning joint system that allows me to bend my limbs and propel forward, working, non-smoking lungs... I've got all the equipment to be able to do this. I've just got to retrain my brain.
I used to cover up the treadmill dash with a towel or a magazine so that I was never aware of how long I've run until I decided I was done and then would whisk the cover-up away to be pleasantly (or devastatingly) surprised. No more. If this is going to be a true goal, I: 

1) need to be able to track my pace and see how long I've run for

2) need to be able to overcome my mental block for running

I started this brain-training a little after 1 mile. I looked down at the treadmill dashboard (MISTAKE!) and saw that I had gone 1.3 miles . Immediately, I could feel the exhaustion that was non-existent before that point set in. That's when my legs spoke up. "We're not tired. We can keep going. We're not tired. We can keep going". I shut my brain up and kept going.

Did I walk at all during that 2 mile jaunt? I will not lie to you - Yes, I did. But if you've been following for a while now, you'll remember that this whole journey is about small victories leading up to larger ones. Today's small victory was that instead of just stopping at 1.3 convinced that I had run as far as I could, I didn't listen to the part of me that didn't think i could. I pushed through. 

This is the beginning of the end of "I can't."

Until Tomorrow,

J