{"id":2193,"date":"2010-09-29T14:26:38","date_gmt":"2010-09-29T21:26:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.radragon.com\/journal\/?p=2193"},"modified":"2010-09-29T14:26:38","modified_gmt":"2010-09-29T21:26:38","slug":"reality-setting-in-_","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.radragon.com\/journal\/2010\/09\/29\/reality-setting-in-_\/","title":{"rendered":"Reality setting in. +_+"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><span style=\"text-decoration: line-through;\">Well, it&#8217;s official; I&#8217;m totally freaking out about my October schedule. With only 11 days until my first triathlon, 17 days until my final long (20-mile) run, 25 days until the Rock &#8216;n&#8217; Roll Los Angeles half marathon, not to mention the Marine Corps Marathon at the end of October that I&#8217;ve working towards to, the feeling of helplessness, doubt and disintegrating self-confidence is settling in. I R\u00a0 SCREWED. +_+<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"text-decoration: line-through;\">I think my poor 18 mile run this last weekend was the culprit. Despite finishing the mileage, it&#8217;s my second consecutive awful run (I only did 6.2 miles rather than 16 the weekend prior). Of course, I&#8217;m the only person to blame since I haven&#8217;t been doing my midweek runs and opt to do alternate workouts (that are just &#8220;OK&#8221;). So last weekend, other than the intense heat, I specifically remember feeling really tired and having negative thoughts like, &#8220;<em>why the heck am I doing this again?<\/em> <em>Why do I keep signing up for marathons?<\/em> <em>Why am I doing this to myself?<\/em>&#8221; I can&#8217;t even get myself to sign up for the 2011 Los Angeles Marathon because I&#8217;m seriously reconsidering why I&#8217;m &#8220;running.&#8221;<\/span><\/p>\n<p>Well, I began writing the above doom-and-gloom post earlier this afternoon but thought twice about it. I guess writing with an empty stomach whilst suffering from the heat is conducive to negative thoughts! Now that I&#8217;ve had my lunch and perhaps a bit more perspective (<a href=\"http:\/\/karagoucher.competitor.com\/\">Kara Goucher<\/a> and <a href=\"http:\/\/running.competitor.com\/2010\/09\/news\/for-paula-radcliffe-its-a-boy_14686\">Paula Radcliffe<\/a> gave birth to two healthy baby boys &#8212; their dreams of motherhood are fulfilled!), the day suddenly seems so much brighter despite it being still hot as heck.<\/p>\n<p>Anyway, Kara Goucher and Paula Radcliffe both took a break from their racing schedules to do what they wanted the most &#8212; be a mother. At least, that&#8217;s what Kara Goucher has been writing about in her blog and in this one interview I read ages ago. That being said, even if running is their occupation, it&#8217;s not necessarily their life. Which is where said perspective came in: I&#8217;m running to be fit and maintain a relatively healthy life (I put relatively there cos my next <em>Instructable<\/em> is going to be a Spam sandwich! ;)), but I digress&#8230; I&#8217;m not running for Olympic glory or placing in my age group or anything like that, so why am I freaking out about October&#8217;s races? If I can <em>finish <\/em>all the races with a smile on my face and still be able to walk afterwards, I think that would be fantastic. If I get a PR, even better, but I won&#8217;t die if I don&#8217;t. My training won&#8217;t really go to waste because it contributed to my overall fitness and as long as I could, I can always redeem myself in another race.<\/p>\n<p>Don&#8217;t get me wrong, I&#8217;m not giving up on my goal to PR the Marine Corps Marathon, but I&#8217;m just reminding myself that even if I&#8217;m 2 seconds, five minutes or one hour from my goal finish, I&#8217;ll just take what I&#8217;ve learned from that race and apply it to the next running event I sign up for.<\/p>\n<p>So yeah&#8230; Bring it on, October! ^_^<\/p>\n<p>p.s.,<br \/>\nI still want to qualify for Boston someday, but I&#8217;m guessing that&#8217;ll be a few decades from now. \ud83d\ude09<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Well, it&#8217;s official; I&#8217;m totally freaking out about my October schedule. With only 11 days until my first triathlon, 17 days until my final long (20-mile) run, 25 days until the Rock &#8216;n&#8217; Roll Los Angeles half marathon, not to mention the Marine Corps Marathon at the end of October that I&#8217;ve working towards to,  <a href=\"https:\/\/www.radragon.com\/journal\/2010\/09\/29\/reality-setting-in-_\/\"> read more <span class=\"meta-nav\">&raquo;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[4,3],"tags":[302,299,303,298],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.radragon.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2193"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.radragon.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.radragon.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.radragon.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.radragon.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2193"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.radragon.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2193\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2195,"href":"https:\/\/www.radragon.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2193\/revisions\/2195"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.radragon.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2193"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.radragon.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2193"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.radragon.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2193"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}