Suck It, Barter Hill.

I'll admit, I have been feeling pretty cocky about my marathon training. The shorter distances and slower paces have been pretty easy. Heck, even the 10 mile run last Saturday wasn't too bad.

But today was different. I was a few minutes into my warm-up mile and I already felt like it was going to be a bad run. At the mile mark, I increased my pace to 10:09 per mile. And less than a half mile later, I hit Barter Hill.

This doesn't feel good today. You could do the miles, instead.

You're just hungry from not eating breakfast. You should run the miles after work.

So what if you blow off one training run? You're still running twelve miles Saturday.

See? Barter Hill. It's where I start making deals with myself to do anything except complete the task at hand.  It starts with a kernel of self-doubt and builds to a full-blown attack on my confidence and determination.

Unless...

I dig deep, tell myself there is no way around the task except to finish it, and I keep going. That's what happened today. I shook off the "stop" attitude, turned the music up a bit louder, and fought to find a running rhythm. At the end of my scheduled five mile run, I felt powerful and successful.

It doesn't always work. Sometimes, the voices of doubt get too loud and I cave. When that happens, I feel like crap emotionally long after any physical soreness would have faded. And that's my lesson, the big take-away.

Don't let temporary weakness (physical or mental) become more than it is. Push back and fight back. The victory at the end is that much sweeter knowing how much you worked for it.

Confidence, like sweat, is very sexy.

Moments of Doubt at Barter Hill

I went off to the gym this morning, confident I would work out but not really sure exactly what I was going to do. I'm on day 12 of my 31 day exercise challenge, and I'm mixing it up with biking, walking, and running. 

Anyway, I was heading to the gym and I decided I would run. When I hit the treadmill, I thought, "I can do a 10k this morning, no problem." 

And then I started running. I stepped off at 6.4mph with the plan of kicking it up .1 each half mile. Everything was going great until I hit Barter Hill. 

What is Barter Hill? It's not an actual hill, of course. It's that moment on a run when I start negotiating in my head to try to get out of my original plan. It goes something like this: 
__________ 

"I was going to run 6 miles, but I should just run 3, instead, and then do 30 minutes on the bike. Same cardio, but easier on my shins." 

"Why run a 10k? I should just do 30 minutes of cardio and then switch to strength training." 

"This is too much. Your shins hurt, don't they? Probably best if we just run the 5k and then you can go for a long walk this afternoon. Yeah, that's a great idea. You'll get another full hour of cardio." 
__________ 

Like I said, Barter Hill. And sometimes, it's too much for me and I cave. But not today. I skipped ahead in my music until I found a song that was faster and louder, cranked it up, and started running even harder. 

My plan today was a 10k. I did it. I ran 6.2 miles in 55:40, then I walked another .22 as a cool down to complete my hour. 

Suck it, Barter Hill. Today, I owned you!