Tuesday, July 17, 2007

Progress?

Progress is a funny thing. A day comes when you finally see for yourself that you've made some progress. Then something else happens that makes that thought all go to *bleep*.

I'll explain that a little better.

I've been running since January, slowly increasing my mileage as the months went by. VERY slowly. Now, I find I'm running over 30K a week. I've been tired. I've been putting in a lot of time. I've been working hard. But have I really been improving? Ok, yeah, there have been some really excellent runs. Even runs where my feet haven't fallen asleep at all. There have been runs where my speed has increased, without my even trying. There have been long runs where I still have enough juice left at the end of it to sprint the last 25 metres. Then I physically see the progress. The passport photo I had taken in May was rejected. I just had it re-done today. Here they are.
Yeah, there's a difference alright. So despite nothing going right at work for me today, and feeling like I can't get past first gear, I'm feeling pretty good about myself. I had 6K on the schedule to run tonight. I thought to myself, "Easy run". Right. My legs and feet felt horrible for easily more than the first half of this run. I was wondering if I was ever going to get through it. Luckily, I'm stubborn, and I've been doing this long enough now that I know those first 3K are the toughest for me, no matter how long the run. So, I got it done. It didn't feel great, but I got it done.

The moral of this story? Progress doesn't always feel great, but if you keep working at it, progress happens.

2 comments:

Tee/Tracy said...

Good for you and excellent positive attitude!

Where you going with your passport? Somewhere fun :)

My passport photo is FUGLY. I wish I could re-take mine. LOL. I can't wait until it needs renewed.

Tracy said...

I am taking my passport to Disney World Florida in January, where I will be running the half marathon.

Is that some crazy crap or what! :)