mile 1

Thursday, May 20, 2010
3 miles
33:46

Today is the first day of my "marathon" to freedom.

I felt exhausted and sweaty and slow, but I finished...

I'm going to be honest, I stopped twice in the last mile. I was discouraged and I didn't have the mental stamina to keep going.

Since I've been a runner for a long time, I have developed a few ways of dealing with stamina problems. One thing I've tried when running is taking a bad habit of the "run-walker" and flipping it: Sometimes a runner will start walking and say "I'll start running again when I get to that..." and "that" keeps moving more and more forward. When I get tired, I say "I'm going to start walking when I get to that... and I keep moving "that" forward because I can keep going.

This time, even though I tried to play this game in my head, I ended up stopping for a couple of moments. The first stop I cannot really explain... I just stopped.

The second one happened due to my poor memory: I was counting the streets until I got to the street where I live, and I forgot one. When I approached it and realized that I was one street ahead of myself in my head, it was so demoralizing that I just stopped.

I guess finishing my routes without stopping motivates me in a lot of ways. It builds my physical stamina, but it also strengthens my confidence in myself. It is kind of cliche, but it's like that saying "where there's a will, there's a way"; I just feel like when I can make myself believe I can keep going even when my body wants to stop, then I can make myself continue in my job, my friendships, and life, when quitting seems easier.

My next run will be the same route, and I hope that my body- and my mind- can find a will to make it from start to finish without stopping.