A Pair of Minor Epiphanies
May. 2nd, 2008 12:39 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
jamesq1) Don't whine unless you're willing to do something in addition to the whining. Hence this morning's run.
2) While running, I thought about the fact that I wasn't in the shape I was last October when I ran the half-marathon. I'm at a point where I can run for about a kilometer and a half without a break. With breaks (about a minute of walking between each 1-1/2 Km segment) I can probably do 10 Km. Enough to finish next weekend's Forzani's Race, though I won't be setting any personal bests.
I might be irritated by the fact that I can't run as well as today as I did six months ago, but I don't view it as a moral failing. That I will have to go through thresholds of improvement is not, in my mind, anything other then an acknowledgment of simple facts. I have to get to the point where I can run two km straight, then five, then ten, then push the overall distance up to 22 km if I want to do the run again six months from now (and I do).
Weight-loss, OTOH, I don't see the same way. Losing 40 pounds (again), then 45, then 50, etc. all the way up to an eventual 70 pounds off seems like a Sisyphean task. Partly because I haven't actually achieved it even once yet, whereas I've gone from can-barely-walk-due-to-injury to 10 km non-stop multiple times in the last ten years. Partly because I worry that no matter how hard I try, If I ever do fall back to square one, that I'm doomed to stay there. And of course there are all the toxic "reasons" I outlined previously.
Intellectually, there should be no difference between the two. In both cases I'm training the body to push it's limits in the direction of better health. I know that the simple facts of physics will eventually have the response I want. My brain knows this. My heart thinks of them differently. As a good little INTP that's identified the mental problem I have to believe my brain. To hell with my lying emotions.
2) While running, I thought about the fact that I wasn't in the shape I was last October when I ran the half-marathon. I'm at a point where I can run for about a kilometer and a half without a break. With breaks (about a minute of walking between each 1-1/2 Km segment) I can probably do 10 Km. Enough to finish next weekend's Forzani's Race, though I won't be setting any personal bests.
I might be irritated by the fact that I can't run as well as today as I did six months ago, but I don't view it as a moral failing. That I will have to go through thresholds of improvement is not, in my mind, anything other then an acknowledgment of simple facts. I have to get to the point where I can run two km straight, then five, then ten, then push the overall distance up to 22 km if I want to do the run again six months from now (and I do).
Weight-loss, OTOH, I don't see the same way. Losing 40 pounds (again), then 45, then 50, etc. all the way up to an eventual 70 pounds off seems like a Sisyphean task. Partly because I haven't actually achieved it even once yet, whereas I've gone from can-barely-walk-due-to-injury to 10 km non-stop multiple times in the last ten years. Partly because I worry that no matter how hard I try, If I ever do fall back to square one, that I'm doomed to stay there. And of course there are all the toxic "reasons" I outlined previously.
Intellectually, there should be no difference between the two. In both cases I'm training the body to push it's limits in the direction of better health. I know that the simple facts of physics will eventually have the response I want. My brain knows this. My heart thinks of them differently. As a good little INTP that's identified the mental problem I have to believe my brain. To hell with my lying emotions.
