I used to run almost every day, but about a month ago I fell down and busted my knee up pretty bad. I was sore for a week, and I never really got back moving again. I just didn't feel like it. I had been training for the Kansas City Marathon, and I just felt so burned out and defeated. I have spent the past month coming up with little excuses to avoid running again. I started to feel really gross, down and blah.
Out of nowhere today this super weird thing happened: I woke up really agitated. I promptly put on my tennis shoes, sloppily changed into workout gear in the dark, went downstairs and ran two miles on the treadmill. I was tired, my legs hurt a little, and I just powered through the whole thing like I didn’t care at all.
I think that I snapped this morning. I just got restless to the point of anger. For the past couple of weeks, I’ve been so sedentary, a total couch spud. It was an inertia thing: an object at rest staying at rest. I guess when I woke up this morning, I couldn’t take it anymore. I had this awful and powerful urge to move. I had to
do something or else I was going to freak out. For the past couple of weeks, I have putting all this pressure on myself to go work out, go to the gym (I don’t even really like my gym), count calories and watch what I eat, all while doing none of those things. I was caught in the most negative thought pattern, and it wasn’t doing anything for me. All the while, I'm just feeling super burned out. It’s as though I had someone sitting on my shoulder and nagging me all the time, and I was just ignoring that voice. Truthfully, I've been beating myself up. This had become a pattern of constant self-berating, and I just couldn’t deal. I think it comes down to analyzing why I run, or exercise at all for that matter. Has it ever really been about my health?
When I woke up this morning and decided that I was going to run, I don’t think it was about a healthy figure, weight or quieting the nagging voices telling me that I should be exercising. It was more like busting out and being free from the trap of sitting down and not doing anything. Maybe I was running away from these ideas of what I “should” be doing as a healthy, good, whole person. I decided today that I don’t want to worry about quantifying every move I make as a step in a healthier (or unhealthier) direction. Sometimes you just want to run for fun, or get out on the bicycle because there is a nice breeze, or eat a cheeseburger and not hate yourself. Is that okay? I think it’s okay. Food is not an enemy, and exercise it not a savior.
I’m making some changes in my life to be a little bit better-rounded, and I’m going to try to quit with the rules. Accepting yourself the way you are is not profitable, and if you are susceptible to marketing, advertising, magazines covers and negative self-talk, you set yourself up for a lifetime of notgoodenough. I’m a sponge for all that stuff (I admit it!). It's time to beat back all that negative self-talk with a little bit of movement. It's times like these when I remember why I really love to run. It's about freedom.
