Wee bit of navel-gazing

One year ago, I was undertaking a no-walk daily challenge, incrementally running without any walk breaks by 1 further minute each day. It was a tough challenge, but I succeeded, reaching 30 minutes without a walk break. I hadn't really expected to reach the end when I started, but when it happened I had expected this would be the beginning of turning it all around for me, mentally, with running, but the opposite was the truth - I slipped further back after the challenge ended, and was lucky the rest of the year to even run 5 minutes without a walk. It was, of course, all mental.

It feels like I've finally beaten those demons, and broken down the walls, as I can now 'comfortably' run without walk breaks - but I don't really know when the moment was that fixed it. Running the 10k training run with Davie, Julie and Dave the week before Glasgow 10k, without a single walk break, was a definitive moment for me, as was getting to around 10-11 miles in the EMF half marathon with the sudden understanding that I would be running the whole 13.1 miles. But I think perhaps the walls really started getting broken right at the very beginning of 2015, when I changed the way I was thinking about things. I started putting the past behind me, and trying to approach everything with a much more positive mindset. Most importantly, I stopped the 'all or nothing' thinking; it's ingrained in me that if I only get, say, 80% of the way towards something, that's a big fat fail, and I'm therefore a big fat failure. This year, I'm congratulating myself for that 80%, and acknowledging the work that has gone in to achieve it. I set myself weightloss goals that were challenging, but not rigid, and I set myself an eating plan that didn't have any firm, set "rules". And I looked around me to see what support was around me, who I could actually count on - and I reached out to those who really were there for me. Surrounding myself with inspirational people in day-to-day life, or at training runs, social runs, parkruns, races (*coughcough* such as people like Gerry Craig, who clearly should get a mention in every blog post I write, haha...) and spending time with people who push me to be more than I am, without pushing me to do it the way they think it should be done, is vital.

I'm still very much a work in progress, and there's a lot still to do - especially as this past few weeks has shown me how easy it is to fall back into old eating habits, and to make excuses for poor decisions. But I'm not giving myself a hard time any more - I have work to do, and every day I am stunned at the progress I'm continuing to make. My lifestyle is still not quite the 'new normal' I'm trying to make it, but I'm getting there - and I'm having a whale of a time figuring it all out. x