Patience

Is patience ever a name? Like a kids first name.. like Constance, or Grace, or Hope---ok Hope is always the middle name. It seems like patience falls in line with all those other not-actual-name words and classy definitions enough that people would start naming their offspring after it. Maybe not? I don't know.

 Exercising my patience muscles for an hour while trying to hitchhike in Puerto Natales, Chile

I've always envisioned myself pretty patient, but then I started to get to know myself better and found that it really depends on the situation and the circumstances. I probably have a fairly typical patience threshold in general but I realized something about patience recently. You're always practicing having it. Well, those of us that believe we are trying to improve ourselves are always practicing it. Its never polite to have an outburst because you're done waiting around for some seemingly useless cause, but you try and try to be patient and nice because that is how you keep friends and not alienate people around you, right? I don't know.

I'm having trouble being patient with my running. I just want to be fit ("fit" is definitely a completely relative term)again. I am finding myself wishing the same thing everyone wishes for, whether secretly or out loud---to be fit without having to wait around through all the building phases of hard-work and sacrifices and time gone by.
I enjoy running, so even though I'm not as graceful as I'd like to be yet, it's okay. It's not like I am training to be a champion weight lifter, I don't think that would be fun, so it would be a huge bummer to be doing that all the time. I am happy to be healthy and running, and I try to exude gratitude for my health and ability to do what I love as much as I do. But this phase of practicing patience is HARD! It's not AS fun as training while you're already pretty fit. The difference is like fine tuning your guitar after a little strumming and before you go out on stage Versus hurriedly putting strings on your guitar while walking out on stage only to have to delay the show and face the shining lights while you try and get the strings to at least look correct, despite what they may sound like(the show must go on!).

I may be exaggerating. How can I complain about being perfectly healthy and training with no major necessity to be in really-good-shape for another 10 weeks? Not to mention my humongous wealth of help I have along the way from my family, friends, bosses, co-workers, teammates and competitors alike. My personal lesson about patience morphed into a miniature epiphany that is more about gratitude, thanks, and personal satisfaction.

I don't think I have anything cooler sounding to say than that last bit so please just pretend this sentence isn't here and reread the little section above before you exit out of the page. Thanks :)

The Process of Becoming Fit again

While traveling in Latin America some bad stuff happened early on that made me a bit nervous to explore new, exciting, and potentially lethal places. Combine that with then arriving in Central America where it was quite humid, sunny, and hot, I only ran a few times within a solid 2 months. We weren't by any means inactive. We hiked, lugged around big backpacks, walked, went volcano boarding and all sorts of stuff but not much running. Upon getting home to southern CA, I quantified my lack of fitness by promptly running a 5k at race effort. 18:00.

Burning some extra calories on our 4 night hike of the "W" circuit in Torres Del Paine. Patagonia, in the Chilean Andes 

Normally, it would have taken me over 2 minutes less to cover the distance. But thats not normal anymore. In the past 3 years (maybe more), I have not taken much time off. At least not all at the same time day after day, so I was never all too far off from "race shape". I now can understand better what its like for friends of mine who have seriously slowed down their running to all of a sudden try and run like they used to-FAST. To be fit is to be able to run fast and feel good (I mean, basically). Coming back to daily training and not being able to run what for years has been my "easy, whatever, daily run, nice" pace is a bummer. It's not that I don't understand my current fitness, I do. But my body hasn't gotten the idea yet. I take off for a run and my body wants to start cruising at a decent clip but it reminds me with these weird feelings that it can't do it so well right now, I call these feelings pain. In various places and types. Leg pain, head pain, chest pain, confidence pain, pride pain, and ego pain (this ones the worst).

I've been back less than 2 weeks and I have to remind myself on a daily basis to cool off and not try to do an easy 80 minute run at 7 minute pace. I am having to hold back and hold back so that I return to fitness properly and will be able to build off of it. But it sucks. I want to jump right to 40 miles per week then 55 then 60 then cruise around thinking I'm cool and hold more than that all summer but thats freaking stupid. I am happy that I know its stupid, but my plans for the end of summer and fall don't allow enough time to reeeaally properly get fit. So I think I'll compromise. Maybe I will do it right and run 40 minutes until its really easy then 60, then some 70s and finally start to mix it all up like a real collegiate runner, but I don't now yet.

Sometime before the snow came in Ashland OR, maybe November '13. Post warm up, pre interval workout of some kind. 

I've found that my quarter life crisis (My life at age 25[its not actually a crisis]) has brought many things into the forefront of my mind even more than usual. One great example of this was my decision to skip a track season/term of college to go backpacking for 2 months with my lovely girlfriend. I hope that I will train as smart as I know how to train, but I'm not worried. I know that if I make sacrifices such as running 80 minutes at 7 minute pace far too early because I'm having too much fun running with some friends or experiencing the trail, they will be worth it. It may sound naive, but it feels more like a priority change. One for the better. Bearing confidence in changes untested is such a reviving sensation. I think it comes with age, failures and successes. Experience is paramount, but it has to be translated into terms that will affect change in future decisions and situations.
Sometimes I feel like I don't write in english. If I lost you somewhere in there, just imagine I was mixing up Spanish, English, Creole, and 2 other indigenous caribbean Nicaraguan languages. I heard people speaking like that, it was nuts! Oh, and they had what sounded like a Jamaican accent on top of it all!