I ran my first 5K of the year yesterday. I was sloooow, so slow I was almost embarrassed to post it on Strava. I posted it anyway.
I had some moments on that run, though, of feeling like kind of fine? Usually, my calves get tight, my heels might start to blister and bleed (this actually did happen), my pacing is all over the place and my lungs start to protest. This time, nothing. Aside from the slight discomfort that I think just happens from exerting your body, I felt fine.
I still stopped and walked though. Several times. And a couple of those times, I had enough presence of mind to ask myself why. I didn't have a good answer. I was stopping because running sucks? Because I didn't want to do it? Because I had never done it before?
That last one is the scary one. Laziness, mediocrity, as habit is scary. But I'm noticing it in myself more and more this year. Last weekend, running the 10K with Samir, I stopped and walked a couple times too. He was like, you (I) need to learn how to run slow. Like, so slow you could walk faster, but you're still getting your knees up and swinging your arms. You can go as slow as you want, but you still need to look like you're running. That's the exercise of it. That feels like something a gym teacher would say to the kids walking the mile, but I think it's correct. Fake it until you make it.
The problem is, habits are good debaters. They are so convincing, sometimes I don't even realize we were arguing. My habits have been talking me out of a lot, I think. Running a full 5K non-stop, even though I think I could. Writing regularly, even though, again, I think I could. And probably should! Like I told Roy, writing my grad school apps was too hard. I want to know what I actually sound like.
Anyway, writing this and writing here is partially an attempt to push back on talking myself out of things. I'm not sure what will go here versus the very dead posts section of my website. I generally don't like digital presence sprawl, but I don't want to talk myself out of writing, and knowing that employers visit that website is enough of a deterrent.
I had a stupid piece on F1 that I kind of manically wrote two (?) weekends ago that seems destined to die in drafts. I was thinking about whether the car or the driver was more important, but I kind of stopped watching Drive to Survive and I wasn't super compelled by the methods. Again, talked out of it.
I'm going for something more informal here. More narrative, more reflection, more pseudonymous personality. Something in the vein of PM, freak, Jess or John. lfg.