Reflection

This weekend was a weekend of reflection, or as my wife would call it, being moody and depressed.  There is a lot of change taking place in my life at the moment, especially in the area of work and as we are but creatures of habit, sometimes change can scare us.

As part of my 5km loop there is a inner relief road that I run along which is 1km long.  This straight flat road is lined on both sides by deciduous trees, all the same type.  On my last run, the 7th of November, as I ran along through the beauty of the golden leaves I noticed one of the trees was still all green.  I wondered why was this.  Was it younger?  Was it planted later in the season?  Was it just fighting the change?

As I ran the loop today I noticed a few trees were getting bare, others were still beautifully golden and as I ran I looked out for my green tree.  As I got to it I noticed that mother nature had finally caught up to it, although it was still fighting.  Half its leaves are still green but the other half have started to turn.  All of this got me thinking, why do we fight change so hard?  One thing about life is that it is constantly changing and we can spend so much energy and time trying prevent change from happening or worrying about something we have no control over.  With change comes new experiences and new opportunities and if we are awake, aware and alert the changes can be beautiful too.  We just need to look at it a different way.

Taking this into my running, I ran my heart out today but didn't manage to break the 25 minutes for 5km.  I could get annoyed by the change in my times that lack of exercising has brought on or I could look at the opportunity that this brings.  This is a time in my life where I need to be mentally strong.  While I don't have much time to run long runs, I have the opportunity  to once again focus on my developing my inner strength by pushing through shorter runs that are tought for me now but previously would not have been so hard.  Maybe it is something I need now and change has brought this to me

Words of wisdom from the Dalai Lama

"If you have fear of some pain or suffering, you should examine whether there is anything you can do about it. If you can, there is no need to worry about it; if you cannot do anything, then there is also no need to worry."


I didn't blog for my run on the 7th but here it is

Cool Evening

After Sunday's 5km run I decided to brave the cold and run again on Monday.  It was a nice cool evening and a tough 5km run by my current fitness standards.  I really enjoyed the run and mentally I feel I've missed it.

While I didn't run last night I did try to boost my motivation by downloading the sample of Eat and Run by Scott Jurek to read on my kindle.  I think I may just by the book as an early birthday present to myself, it looks a good read.  Has anyone read it?

Looking forward to another 5km tonight.

Start Stop, Start Stop

This year, as the title suggests, has been struggle to maintain any sort of consistency in my running.  I tend to get the idea that I need to run and start running for a couple of days, or weeks and then stop for a month or two.  Then a wave of needing to run hits again and the cycle continues.  What I am lacking this year is complete motivation and focus.  While I want to run, and recognise and feel the benefits of running, it has been hard for me to manifest that into actual running.

I decided to tune back into reading blogs, which I've really not done this year, and came across this post from Eric of Just a Mile To Go.  It really resonated with me and made me realise that last year I had a focus with all my runs and my training that I did't have this year.  Last year I was running for a reason and it was easy to go out on the cold, wet windy days because of this.  This year I have felt lost.

I am currently re-finding (if that is a word) my reason for running and looking forward to the challenge ahead.  To that means, after not running a single race this year, I've signed up for the first race I ever ran again.  The Great Ireland Run in April 2013, a nice 10km...  Just trying to put a little focus into my running calendar.