I've been putting off the decision about the half marathon I (ages ago) booked for mid-March. I signed up for it in September, thinking it would be the push I needed to train hard through the winter, but not realising my mindset still wasn't ready at that time. I trickled through the last couple of months of 2014, getting heavier, doing less running, and trying to get my head in the right place. Everything changed 4 weeks ago, but it's too late. It has to be too late. I currently struggle to get round a 5km run, and haven't broken 40 minutes for a while. The half marathon is 6 weeks away, and there's no way I'm ready - if I tried to do one right now, I'd be lucky to be faster than, probably, about 3hrs10 (my PB is 2:44, Sept 2013)- which would mean, going by the last fews years' worth of results, being dead last on race day.
Running is not my goal this year. In theory, if I thought of the race as being just a way to burn kcals and get some exercise, towards my main goal of weightloss, then I would do it. BUT the other part of my goal is to be able to maintain the weightloss, though building my belief in myself, my confidence, and my resilience. I'm still very much at the beginning of this journey, and pushing my greatly overweight, slow body around a half marathon course in last place the whole way, is something I doubt I would manage well, mentally or emotionally. Especially if it's cold or wet, and everyone I know running it (lots) has long since finished and either gone home, or got really cold and tired hanging around an empty finish line. Though, on the flip-side, if I can cross the finish line of a half marathon despite it all, would that be good for me?
I do think I'm leaning towards cancelling - I don't want to feel this year that I don't go through with plans I've made, because that's pretty much all I did last year, however ultimately I need to make the decisions that are right for my goals, regardless of how difficult the decisions may be. I'll give it another day or two's thought, then make a decision knowing I'm firmly behind it.
In other news... yesterday was double-gym day, and a great couple of workouts (one before work, one after), focussing mainly on upper body. Across the two sessions, I covered LOTS. Things like dumbbell tricep extensions, bench press (up to 2 sets of 5 reps of 30kgs, a rep PB!), bench dumbbell press, bench dumbbell flys, chest flys on a swiss ball, and single arm dumbbell rows. Cable flys, chest press, incline press-ups, plank, leg press, and lateral dumbbell raises. Rowing machine, stepper machine, and a lot of padwork (where I get to hit pads with boxing gloved-hands). Not a bad day, when you look at it like that! My shoulders and chest are already feeling it today - I felt yesterday I was showing some real progress and in the evening workout, I pushed myself quite hard when I could easily have slacked off after having already done a good session in the morning. It's those kind of days that make me feel I'm on the right path: I definitely feel ready to start picking up the exercise now, after a hesitant start to the year (mostly because of the weather, but also because I've prioritised food as my first thing to work on). I've fallen short of my step count goal most days this week, and need to be a little creative about how I hit that target the rest of the week, as the snow comes in again. But I'm on it. :-)
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