The ironic nature of starting a blog to track your own efforts in mindful living and then avoiding said blog because you're on a mental hiatus from moving forward is obvious in the time between posts here.
Lent as a marker in time during spring often serves as an apt reboot for new years resolutions. In the past few years I've pep talked myself not into giving up things such as caffeine or chocolate, but rather adding something new to my routine like more gym time, yoga, swimming, etc. As a result, I hit my training goals in 2009 and then promptly road my healthy achievements right off a cliff.
The odd nature of falling off a life precipice is that you are often in total free fall for an extended period of time before you really sit up and say "wow, when did that happen?" And by that, you of course are asking why you suddenly find yourself nearly 15+ lbs. heavier than when you started training, completely divorced from your gym routine, without any yoga centering left, and the closet you've come to runner's high in months was breathing deeply while driving past someone else running on a gorgeous day.
As I rounded the corner into 2011, I knew I was in trouble. The fumes of training that had propelled me across the 2010 Broad Street 10 miler were long gone and I was committed to kicking the 2011 race with some serious training. Then I canceled my trainer because I wanted to save the money. I haven't seen the gym since.
My friends and I sporadically tried to get reinvigorated by going to yoga, fail. We signed up for an 8k in March to give us a midway training goal. A friend ran the race wearing my bib because the number of times I've put on my running shoes in recent months? Zero. Nada. Not even close.
Number of excuses? Infinite. Number of legitimate life altering excuses? Zero.
So Lent was to mark a new beginning for me, a chance to refocus. With less than three days to go, I am no further ahead than I was at the beginning. I actually can't run the race next weekend because I literally couldn't finish in the allotted time and taking your body from zero to ten miles on a single morning is unwise and potentially damaging. So that free fall? I think I'm starting to see the bottom of the canyon.
I know all of the one day at time adages, one foot in front of the other, try not to focus on the big picture, just start with something small. So my something small is acknowledging that I've lost all accountability.
I'm going to start climbing out now, I need go dust off my running shoes.
I was training to run my first 5k, just over two weeks from now, and just as I was starting to make some progress in my training... I've been sick almost nonstop for the last six weeks, and then hurt my knee to boot. Oops. I may just skip my May 8 race and try again later.
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