Daily Wahnsinn

After yesterday’s 9-miler having been so awful, today was a repeat performance of equal awfulness. I had planned for 12 miles and I barely made it, but I did. I’m not going to bother with too many stats, instead I’ll try and understand why I’ve been struggling so much on my runs lately.

I was actually quite excited when I headed out the door. Today was the NYRR NYC Half, so I thought Central Park was going to be crowded and I’d better run a different route. I decided to run along the Hudson River, down to the Battery. It’s my old course from before moving neighborhoods and I was excited to go back. Especially since the weather was going to be nice. The course is mostly flat and I thought it would be great for my confidence. 

I started my run and for one reason or another, I just couldn’t get into it. It didn’t take me very long to realize that it was going to be another long struggle and I hated it. The only thought on my mind was how I felt miserable and how I wanted to stop. I did run the first 6 miles without stopping, then I refueled, turned around to head back home. I guess if I hadn’t been all the way at the far end of Manhattan, I might’ve called it quits and just cut my run short. But I was quite a few miles away from home and the only way to get there was to suck it up and start running again. The next 6 miles were miserable and I had to slow down to a walk twice. 

I don’t know why this keeps happening. It should have been 12 “easy” miles. I’ve done 13 miles without stopping at all before. I don’t know why everything longer than 8 is giving me such grief these days. I’m sure that some of it is mental. Some of it must be just in my mind. But some of it also felt physical. I’m blaming the fact that I’ve worked too much and slept too little lately. At one point, I felt so slow as if I were moving backward instead of forward. I started hurting all over and I don’t like it. Running is supposed to be fun, not something I suffer through.

My half is in less than a month and I’m quite frankly terrified. I feel in absolutely no shape to run a half marathon, let alone one that is a tough course. Quite honestly, I don’t know what to do. Suffer through and just hold on? Reduce miles and feel even less ready (especially, when the training plan that I’m following only half-heartedly tells me that I need to increase weekly mileage)? I don’t know.

To make myself feel better, I headed to Anthropologie and Uniqlo and bought myself some new clothes. So much for saving money.

My day in le forme du bullets:

• Went to my Weight Watchers meeting this morning and I’m really starting to enjoy the monthly weigh ins. Not seeing the weekly, instant feedback on the scale doesn’t make me feel any less accountable for my actions and my decisions. It doesn’t make me try any less hard to lose the last couple of pounds. But it does take away a lot of the stress and heartache bad or mediocre weigh ins have caused me in the past.
• We talked about negative talk in the meetings today and everybody who knows me will confirm that I’m the Queen of Beating Myself Up. If that were a kingdom. If I have one talent, then it’s being hard on myself and beating myself up over my “faults”, “weaknesses” and “mistakes”. It was interesting to see that, obviously, I’m not the only one, but that a lot of other people are hard on themselves for the same reason I am: it protects you in a way.
• After the meeting, Steve, my meeting leader, approached me and Emily, another girl in our Tuesdays group, and asked whether we’d be okay with leaving our email addresses because he’d like to nominate us for the Weight Watchers Success Stories. If we get picked, someone from WW will come talk to us, get our story, they’ll do an official photo shoot and feature us in the magazine/weekly booklet they give out. How cool would that be?
• Throughout the day I struggled to meet yet more deadlines and work on yet more client-fire drills. At one point I snapped at my supervisor (I apologized later), but her hovering over me did not make me complete my tasks faster. 
• After work, we got taken out by a publisher for an event. As stupid, stressful, awful, inhumane, boring, every-other-negative-word-you-can-think-of my job can be, it definitely has also its perks and fun sides. Being treated to fancy restaurants is something we’re used to by now. Sporting events or shows somewhat too. Tonight a publisher that we’ve already spent significant amounts of money with this year took us to Earnest Sewn in NY’s Meatpacking District to buy us new jeans. I ended up with a black pair of their Decca style (I think, they kept it to have it tailored) and holy, I’d never in my life spend that much on a pair of jeans, but hey, they’re free!
• I also drank a small glass of wine and ate two gigantic slices of pizza. I do feel a little bad about it, but I started making up for it by walking home instead of taking the subway.
• The weather is gorgeous in NY today. It’s warm and it feels like spring. It’s beautiful. That walk was needed for more than one reason.
• When trying on jeans, I felt super conscious about my body. I tried them on in a size 27 and they were too small, so I sized up to a 28. They still sit tightly and I don’t know, working with so many skinny girl and me with my big runner’s thighs just made me feel very self-conscious. I kept scrutinizing my body in the mirror. Meh. I also realized today that my shoulders that have always been broad, started looking even bigger. I also have a gigantic rip cage. I still have quite a bit of softness around the belly, but my rips already poke out. My imperfections, perfectly aware of them today.
• My kitchen scale died and me being as obsessed with numbers as I am, I was totally freaked out. I realized that it was only the batteries and indeed, after buying new ones, my scale has come back to life. Phew. I also bought a card that I’ll send to my parents some time this week to just generally say thank you and that they haven’t put me up for adoption when I went through puberty. I was a bratty teenager. And I have wonderful parents. I figured it doesn’t hurt to let them know. 
• I realized I have a lot of clothes but I don’t have a lot of clothes that actually fit me very well. Maybe it’s time to go through my wardrobe, get rid of the things I never ever want to fit in again (apart from a few items of “memorabilia”) and generally make room for new things that I will fee good in.
• I’ve been somewhat awful when it comes to exercising during the last week. I took two rest days last week and also didn’t work out yesterday. This morning I didn’t either, so though you could count tonight’s walk as a workout. I have to run tomorrow.

the idea of shopping at a new sports goods store gets your heart rate up.

Athleta (a Gap Inc brand, just like Gap, Old Navy and Banana Republic) just opened two stores in Manhattan. It’s only their third and fourth stores and the first two outside of California. I’ve shopped with Athleta through their website before, but only more casual clothes. With functional workout clothes, I have this thing where I want to touch the material before I even consider buying it.

I went to their store in the Upper West Side and I really liked it. It’s a good-sized store with a good selection of their products. The staff was super friendly and helpful. Their clothes remind me a little of Lululemon’s clothes in terms of fabric, style and color, yet without the ridiculous Lululemon price tag. That said, I still ended up spending a fair amount, but I was also able to return an item I had ordered online and wasn’t going to keep. So that took quite a bit off my bill. I ended up buying these things:

I almost also got a pair of running shorts, but then I remembered that I actually have enough and that I should rather invest in items I actually need. I have my first ever race coming up in less than 2 months and as it approaches, the days of skipping runs because of less than ideal weather will become less and less. So I thought another pair of capris, a zip up hoodie and a running cap are the wiser investment.

Today’s rain totally fucked with my workout plans for the day. I had decided last night that on top of the workout DVD this morning, I wanted to do a lot of walking. I like walking in the city and I had today off, so it was not like I was pressed for time or anything. Before I headed to the UWS, I headed to a store in the West Village to buy a new wallet. It takes me about 10 minutes to get there. The plan was that I was then going to walk to the UWS from there (takes about 1 hour). It was raining so badly at times, that by the time I made it to the Athleta store in the Upper West Side, I was soaked. Despite the fact that it had stopped somewhere along the last few blocks. Very unpleasant.

Did my shopping and in the meantime, the rain had picked up again. I was about 1 hour (by foot) away from home and was annoyed because I didn’t want to walk (wet), didn’t want to take the train (MTA), didn’t want to wait it out (hungry, hadn’t eaten in too long). I ended up taking the train and of course, by the time I made it to my neighborhood, it had stopped. So I was annoyed that I spend the money on the train, that I missed on the extra 60 minutes of exercise I would have gotten and just generally being annoyed. *g* I went grocery shopping then, cooked a healthy dinner and now I’m getting ready for bed.

I’m weighing in tomorrow and above all I’m curious what the scale will say. I’m (currently) not stressed out because there’s nothing I can do to change the past and even if the result is bad tomorrow, I’ve been back on track for the last few days and I’m ready to kick some serious ass. I got this.