Nothing worth having comes easy

Where the heck have I been?! Why can’t I just be content to spend my time as a trophy wife, staying at home cooking healthy meals, working out, blogging, and vacuuming daily? Nope, that’s way too boring for me.

So between Mary Kaying all day and waiting tables at night (meanwhile…tip your servers people!!!! they work hard and $2 an hour is in no way sufficient compensation for the crap they have to put up with), I don’t even have time for my MOST favorite thing, which is Josh, much less blogging. But I am a firm believer that there is no such thing as “I don’t have time”. No, the correct phrase is “I didn’t make time”. We make time for what we care about and we make decisions every day about what’s important and what can wait. And unfortunately, blogging has been pushed down the priority list.

My eyes are on the future. I have dreamed of owning my own business for years. This has been a life goal since I was 15 and now that Josh is finally out of school and working full time as a Physical Therapist, it’s MY turn!! So every decision I make right now is focused on making that dream my reality.

It’s the reason I decided to become a Mary Kay consultant. It is very difficult for me to ask people to help me or to do things for me. And that’s what I have to do if I want to show people the products. It sucks. I get nervous and awkward and my cheeks turn red. But every time I do it, that feeling is less and less. Eventually, it will go away. But I have to keep going, keep trying, keep failing, and keep learning. And that’s also why I decided to wait tables. (I must be psycho right??) I need to learn to fail. I need to learn to ask for help. And I’ve been doing a lot of both lately.

Remember when I talked about how I love movies about people who pursue a goal? Especially that movie She’s the Man? I kind of feel like that’s my life right now. (Minus early morning workouts with Channing Tatum). I wake up every morning with a plan. I have goals for  every day which will help me reach my goals for the future. The only difference is, Viola’s goal was short term and mine will take a few years.

The butterfly struggle

Yesterday’s Mary Kay message was just what I needed to hear! Many of you know that I love dragonflies! And I have posted about why before. The story I heard last night is related but provides a little bit different perspective.

I would try to retell it myself but I found the true version on this website 

Once a little boy was playing outdoors and found a fascinating caterpillar. He carefully picked it up and took it home to show his mother. He asked his mother if he could keep it, and she said he could if he would take good care of it.

The little boy got a large jar from his mother and put plants to eat, and a stick to climb on, in the jar. Every day he watched the caterpillar and brought it new plants to eat. 

One day the caterpillar climbed up the stick and started acting strangely. The boy worriedly called his mother who came and understood that the caterpillar was creating a cocoon. The mother explained to the boy how the caterpillar was going to go through a metamorphosis and become a butterfly.

The little boy was thrilled to hear about the changes his caterpillar would go through. He watched every day, waiting for the butterfly to emerge. One day it happened, a small hole appeared in the cocoon and the butterfly started to struggle to come out.

At first the boy was excited, but soon he became concerned. The butterfly was struggling so hard to get out! It looked like it couldn’t break free! It looked desperate! It looked like it was making no progress!

The boy was so concerned he decided to help. He ran to get scissors, and then walked back (because he had learned not to run with scissors…). He snipped the cocoon to make the hole bigger and the butterfly quickly emerged!

As the butterfly came out the boy was surprised. It had a swollen body and small, shriveled wings. He continued to watch the butterfly expecting that, at any moment, the wings would dry out, enlarge and expand to support the swollen body. He knew that in time the body would shrink and the butterfly’s wings would expand.

            But neither happened!

The butterfly spent the rest of its life crawling around with a swollen body and shriveled wings.

It never was able to fly…

As the boy tried to figure out what had gone wrong his mother took him to talk to a scientist from a local college. He learned that the butterfly was SUPPOSED to struggle. In fact, the butterfly’s struggle to push its way through the tiny opening of the cocoon pushes the fluid out of its body and into its wings. Without the struggle, the butterfly would never, ever fly. The boy’s good intentions hurt the butterfly.

You run marathons don’t ya?

I went ahead and popped an Insanity dvd in the tv this morning. It’s been about 2 months since I did that, and over a year since I’ve done the workouts consistently…It sucked.

But I noticed something on this particular dvd that I had never heard before. During the very last few minutes of the workout Shaun T asks a dude “You run marathons don’t ya?” The guy mumbles a response that resembles a “yeah”. Then Shaun T says “How does this compare?!” The guy makes a face (he is still in the middle of completing the exercise) and mumbles some incomprehensible answer leading everyone to assume that insanity is, in fact, more difficult than a marathon.

Hmmm…Agree to disagree. Even the speediest marathoners are performing for 4X the time that a 35 minute insanity dvd takes (5 of which are stretching, not to mention all the 30 second rests, but I digress…). It took me 4 and 1/2 hours to run a marathon! I’ll take 30 minutes of pain any day!! I guess I can’t really blame the guy though, I probably wouldn’t argue with Shaun T either.

That is all… Have a lovely weekend!

And don’t forget to

“If you feel bad at 10 miles, you’re in trouble. If you feel bad at 20 miles, you’re normal. If you don’t feel bad at 26 miles, you’re abnormal.”-Rob de Castella, winner of the 1983 World Marathon Championships 

The answer is yes

Sometimes it feels like a run will never end! Yesterday was one of those days for me. I did hill work and on the way home the wind was blowing right in my face at about 15-20 miles an hour. It sucked. I just really wanted to quit and walk the rest of the way.

And then I got a text from a good friend

She had been driving by and spotted me. And I am so glad she sent me that text! It gave me just the boost I needed to finish my run in the time I set.

I love to cheer my friends when I see them out being awesome! Or even if I don’t actually see them I just see the Facebook update. =)

But I have never cheered someone I didn’t know (out in public obviously, not talking about races here). But I think I’m just gonna start letting it go. Because there were a few times in St. Louis when strangers cheered me and I felt like a kid at Christmas. I mean seriously, it felt awesome to have a man I didn’t know literally stop what he was doing on the sidewalk, turn toward me to fist pump the air and tell me to keep it up!

So if you are ever out and see someone you know (or don’t know)  running, cycling or even walking their dog, the answer is YES! Cheer them on. Let them know you think they’re awesome.

“There are two things people want more than sex and money… recognition and praise.”-Mary Kay Ash

In the Valley

I have mentioned many times before that the most difficult thing I have ever attempted is not the marathon. No, in actuality, it is taking control of my thoughts. Changing my negative thoughts to positive ones. And I’ve been having a lot of negative thoughts lately. Mostly due to this occurrence:

Ouch…

In January, I set a goal to run a sub 23:00 5k. I thought it would take me most of the year to get there because my 5k PR in December was 25:23. But on March 23rd I participated in the St. Louis Take Steps for Kids 5k and ran 22:47. A 7:20 pace!!

My first thought was this is a mistake! There is NO WAY that was a full 5k. So I checked it with gmap-pedometer.com and my online garmin map. Sure enough, it was 3.1 miles. So I met my goal super early!! I was stoked. All that hard work in the gym suffering through crossfit definitely paid off!

And then I came back to Texas and something changed. I still can’t quite pinpoint and I don’t think I ever will. Mostly because I don’t think I can point to one cause. There were many things going on at once. Moving, making arrangements, applying for jobs, becoming a Mary Kay consultant, spending time with family, living apart from Josh, subbing in a new school district. Phew! My mind was definitely elsewhere. Then I started feeling sick. An allergy or ongoing sinus infection, who knows.

But I’ve told you all this to tell you that I am not performing well right now. And do you know what someone who is afraid of failure does when they aren’t performing? They just stop. Why would I want to go running when I could barely breathe? I decided that maybe my body was trying to tell me to rest. So I took a few days off, which kinda turned in to weeks.

But I finally realized that all the time in the day I spent worrying and feeling guilty about my lack of exercise was far worse than any workout or bad run. Don’t get me wrong, bad runs suck, but that pain is only temporary. Feeling sorry for yourself is an all-day pain.

As a Mary Kay beauty consultant, I get to listen to motivational messages every day. And I heard one recently that was particularly interesting. (Sometimes these messages are more inspiring to my fitness goals than my MK ones…) This message was about failure. Ha! how perfect for me right?

Here were the main points:

1. “As I walk through the valley of the shadow of death…” The key word is walk. Keep walking, don’t quit and wallow

2. It’s great when things are easy but it is in the “valley” that we learn and grow

3. If you eliminate failure so it is no longer an option would you still cross that finish line to your goal?

And she is so right! I need to eliminate failure from my options. It seems like a long time now but it was only 4 short years ago that I was 220 pounds and completely unhealthy both physically and mentally. If you’ve followed me much, you know I keep a diary and I like to go back and read it every so often for perspective. And that is exactly what I did. I wanted to remember what it was like when I was in that valley. This is an excerpt from a time in my life when I was feeling pretty darn low. I had started taking Zoloft for depression caused by body image issues. Ironically, the Zoloft caused me to gain 60 pounds so I stopped taking them in May 2009.

Sunday August 16, 2009
Zoloft permanently affected the chemicals in my brain. I no longer care about things like doing dishes, cleaning house, staying organized, doing laundry, keeping my car clean, eating right, or exercising. I hate myself even more than before I just don’t dwell on it like I used to. I don’t know what to do. I feel lost and so angry. I pray that I will one day get closer to the old me but right now it seems miles away and I don’t feel like walking, or even crawling for that matter. Josh has been so good through it all but I know he misses how I used to be…Better.

At the time I wrote this, I honestly didn’t know if I would ever get back to a healthy lifestyle. I had tried and failed so many times that I was losing hope. But I kept walking through that valley. Very slowly, I may add, but nonetheless I just kept putting one foot in front of the other and I managed to make it out of that valley.

Sunday December 19, 2009
I have decided to accept that I weigh 220 lbs. I cannot change something until I accept it (did I say that already?) I WILL change this. It may not be this week, this month or even this year but I WILL succeed. I WILL achieve.

3 years later I weighed 65 pounds less and was even happier and healthier than before I entered the valley.

I lost another 10 pounds after this photo was taken and have been maintaining since then =)

Remembering this was just the motivation I needed. (Sidenote: To anyone who is going through a weight loss journey, or any journey for that matter, keep track! It is so important to keep track of your progress because you will need the motivation!)

I had the right idea back in August 2009. Stop wallowing and just accept it. Then move on. So here it is:

I have decided to accept that my running pace has increased significantly from where I would like it to be. I WILL change this. It may not be this week, this month or even this year but I WILL succeed. I WILL achieve.

“Well, it was just a dream, just a moment ago
I was up so high, lookin’ down at the sky
Don’t let me fall
I was shooting for stars on a Saturday night
They say what goes up must come down
But don’t let me fall”
-Don’t Let Me Fall, B.O.B

The victim

I have been thinking about all my “stressors” and I came to an unflattering conclusion. I have been acting like a victim. Yes it’s true. I’m sure many of you aren’t surprised by this and have even been wanting to smack me and let me know yourselves. I kind of wish someone had. Because I have been blaming the outside world for my mood and performance.

And this is wrong.

I am responsible for my reaction to the world around me. And I am sad that I let this knowledge escape me for a while. I mean, this is not what I based my blog on. This was the header on my blog until I replaced it last November after the marathon:

I didn’t know that my body would be able to handle a marathon. I didn’t know that I would have time to go on all the training runs. But it didn’t matter because I believed that it could be done. So I announced it to the world via this blog (just about a year ago) and then set out. And I faced obstacles. I cried and faced fears. But I completed the goal because I decided it was the only option.

And this mind set should also be applied to life. If I believe I am worthless because I am not getting called for an interview, then I will feel depressed. If I believe that I can’t succeed at Mary Kay because I don’t have time then I won’t progress. If I believe that I am poor because we don’t have any money right now, then I will feel helpless.

And I don’t like feeling depressed and helpless. So I am choosing to turn these thoughts around…immediately. I am not a victim. I have never enjoyed the company of others who play this part and I certainly do not want to be that way myself. I have so many reasons to be just blissfully happy and I am a fool to overlook them.

I have posted this quote before but I think it is just so fitting so here it is again:

Struggling

Well I have not been a very good blogger lately. In fact, I haven’t been a very good anything lately. I’ve just been struggling to do so many things that I am barely managing to be mediocre at everything I have gotten myself in to. Running included.

And I don’t know what’s going on with me, I guess it’s some sort of allergy that has popped up out of nowhere (no doubt just to make my life difficult at an already incredibly stressful time, but that’s neither here nor there.) I’ve just been experiencing some difficulty breathing on my runs, really runny nose/eyes and overall un-comfortableness (more than usual that is).

I mean, this is assuming that I have found the time to run. And I just feel so frustrated. I want to be an excellent runner, an outstanding Mary Kay Consultant, an awesome aunt, a dutiful wife/daughter/sister, a health insured employee, a consistent blogger, and much more but I just can’t find the time to make all that happen. Which means I need to spend some time prioritizing. And I’ll let you know how that goes just as soon as I get to it…

Weee!

If my life is a roller coaster, our time in St. Louis was the slow ride to the top of the first hill. Every agonizing click passing so slowly you’re quite sure your just gonna puke. And the second we parked the car in the driveway in Texas we hit the terrifying ride down. Barreling toward who knows what, we are still sliding down. Just waiting for the next hill when things will slow down. I need to catch my breath from screaming at the top of my lungs from the roller coaster I didn’t even realize I was on until it was too late.

But all the things that have been keeping me busy are wonderful things. For one my sweet little nephews! If you’ve followed me at all you know I freakin love those cuties! I spend every second I can with them. If I am not substitute teaching or working my new Mary Kay business (I know, I never got a chance to post about that…maybe one day) I am with those little boys.

But this has not left much “me” time. I am weeks behind on the shows I watch. I am lucky to grab a quick 3 miles (6 was my average before I got home). Which can leave me feeling a bit…irritable, I’ll say.

And amidst all this, I feel “off” somehow. I am not sick, not blatantly, but I feel…different. More tired. Sleepless, nauseous, and off balance. When I do get to workout, my muscles are jello and my lungs scream. (Hold your horses…I’ve had 4 pregnancy tests, one was from the doctor and all are negative so it’s not that) Nonetheless, it is not right. I am not right. I think it is stress. But it is a vicious cycle because the more stressed I get, the more my body reacts. And the more my body reacts, the more stressed I am.

We will move in to our new house next week! But my job right now is in my hometown so that is where I will stay for a few more weeks. Substitute teaching is good for story telling but I am really hoping to hear back from a few jobs soon. I am ready for things to settle down a little bit.

I have been LOVING the training and inspiration that Mary Kay provides me and sometimes it’s as though they are speaking right to me! One such moment was last night when the speaker said “Broke is a temporary condition. Being poor is a state of mind”

 

Be gentle

Whew…we are home! And it’s hot in Texas ya’ll!! But I am not complaining, I have been enjoying seeing the sun every day. The days have just been flying by since we got home. And I have eased up on a few of my rules. And by a few I mean mostly all of them. I have been eating a lot, drinking coke, and hardly exercising. But with so much going on around me, my focus is a little off.

And I paid for it last week. I finally decided to go out for a good long run. I planned to do 7 miles. Stuff came up that day, so I wasn’t able to get to the run until late afternoon. Not ideal because the temperature was in the 80′s and I am NOT used to running in that heat right now. I mean, I was averaging 40 degrees below that in St. Louis. But, I just couldn’t take another excuse so I slathered on the sunscreen and headed out anyway.

Thus ensued the worst run of this year. I just felt like a huge balloon was expanding in my tummy. All the bad decisions I had made up to that point were swelling up and causing a lot of pain and discomfort. I had to stop to walk a lot. Plus I was super sweaty and hot. It was just awful.

And the only thing I could think of during this whole run was the movie Liar Liar. Anyone remember the scene when Fletcher gets pulled over?

Cop: You know why I pulled you over ?

Fletcher: Depends on how long you were following me !

Cop: Why don’t we take it from the top ?

Fletcher: Here goes.

I sped, I followed too closely, I ran a stop sign, I almost hit a Chevy, I sped some more, I failed to yield, I changed lanes without signaling while speeding !

Cop: Is that all ?

Fletcher: No. I have unpaid parking tickets…………..Be Gentle

While I was running I just couldn’t stop thinking about all the soda, processed cheese, sausage, ice cream, cake, and generally just bad for you foods I consumed over the past week. And this run was my punishment. I just wanted to quit and go home. Call Josh to come get me and lay on the floor under the fan. But I didn’t do that. Because I just knew I had to run it out. I had to work it all out of my system, whether that’s what was actually happening or not I don’t know, but I felt soooo much better when I got done. I only made it 6 of the 7 miles but I felt pretty good about that considering the circumstances…

I wasn’t too pleased with my time (I’ve been averaging 9 minute miles) I went 6 miles in a little over an hour which is not a good pace for me right now. But sometimes, it is just a great accomplishment to be out there moving your body.

And the next day I was feeling a hundred times better! I was able to meet my friends for an 80′s themed 5k and run without a single cramp!

Man I have really missed these girls!

As torturous as those 6 miles were, I really need a bad run every once in a while. To remind me why I make the choices I do. I miss junk food. Sometimes, a lot more than others. But I do not miss how running used to be, back before I changed my eating. No wonder running used to suck so bad, it was because I didn’t know how to properly fuel my body. And now I do and the next time I am faced with a choice between grilled chicken or grilled cheese I will remember this experience.

“There is no person so severely punished, as those who subject themselves to the whip of their own remorse.”-Seneca the Elder

Hello April

Our last days in St. Louis have finally arrived and just as I predicted, it is bitter sweet.

But no time to dwell on it now because much like my lovely blogger friend Sara, I have packed a lot in to the next few days:
Packing up (again) and getting ready to head back to Texas
The Go St. Louis half marathon
A long overdue visit to some family nearby
And a grand finale of driving the 12 hours back to Texas all in one day

I am trying not to let the excitement of going home overshadow the excitement I have for the race though. I debated for several weeks about whether to do it or not. I knew I would be anxious to go straight home but I also don’t get the opportunity to travel to big city races very often.

I am also trying not to worry about the fact that I have a minor sinus infection this week which means that my taper week was actually more like halt week. I am just hoping the rest ends up benefiting me on race day. I have a goal to break the 2 hour mark. I ran my last half back in September in 2:10. So if I work really hard I can accomplish this but a sore throat isn’t going help me.

We’ll see what happens.

But in the meantime…

 …if I don’t hit the goal this time it just gives me good reason to sign up for another one!

And really, who could be upset when they are headed home to hold these little cuties?

“We should come home from adventures, and perils, and discoveries every day with new experience and character.”-Henry David Thoreau