Once upon a time, I figured out that Big Brother Bill was a pretty smart guy. He figured out how to push all the right buttons (in a good way) and get me to do all the things I thought I couldn’t do. How? He told me that I couldn’t do it…. plain and simple. Once he did that, I set out to prove him wrong. And I usually did because he usually knew exactly the things that I could do and picked those to tell me I couldn’t do. He taught me to believe in myself.
In the last 30 years, I have discovered that I have to learn to do this all on my own… the finding the determination part of it, the figuring out what I can do and what my limitations are and I’ve had to learn to manufacture the determination to prove that I can do something and I have to prove it to no one but myself. Fortunately, I have learned to do that to some degree. Whenever I find myself at a challenge, at a cross roads, at a point where I have to push a little harder or dig a little deeper, I remember that I proved him wrong (or right as the case may be… since he knew I could all along) many times and I set out to prove that I can do it again.
Are there days when I have my doubts? Sure there are. Lots of times.
That is where I am at right now in a lot of ways. I have started over with Podrunner Intervals doing the intervals at a jog rather than at a faster walk. Having gone through them the first time slower walking then faster walking, I know that I can push myself to do it and that I CAN do it. Now, it is a matter of just going through the motions again of doing it and getting faster and better as I do. Every day I have to get myself up and convince myself that it is a thing worth doing (running… strength training… water instead of pop… the whole 9 yards) and then I lace up my shoes and just get my butt going and do it.
If I didn’t believe I could do it, that I could get my cholesterol numbers back under control, that I can ease up on some of my asthma meds and breath like a “normal” person, I would never get up and do it.
But I look back 6 months and realize that I started out walking just around the culdesac and feeling like I was going to die doing just that much. Now I have gone through the first set of podcasts once and a chunk of the second set the first time. Now I’m no the second lap of the same sets, no longer thinking I can’t be a ‘real’ runner because I’m too fat, too out of shape, too whatever. Now I believe that, if I work at it… one day at a time… one step at a time every day… I can do it. I have to do it becuase if I don’t, I’m letting myself down.
A Figment Of Fitness 