Time to chuck it??

It’s been a wee while since my last blog, and perhaps this one may explain why.  I don’t know how many times I have asked myself in the last four to six weeks or so – “Is it time to chuck it?  Have I come as far as I can?  Is this really a step too far, and is it something I am just not meant to do?”  I’ve had a calf injury and a cold, followed by (when I got back to JogScotland again) a grave case of can’t be arsedness and I have truly struggled with keeping it going.  As each session with jogScotland went I was able to do less than I was doing before, and there was more activity taking place in my head than using my feet.  My thoughts were continually in that negative rut that I was struggling hard to escape from. What is the point of this, I’m getting nowhere, I’m miles behind everyone else, I’m not getting any better at this……. and other general oh woe is me type stuff.

To further compound my “misery” we had changed to a new block and we have new folk joining up which is absolutely brilliant for the club.  But from a personal point of view, this negative thought process that was almost consuming me at times was compounded when all of the newbies are better than me.  I can of course cope with that in itself, because I DO realise how far I have to go, and I DO realise how important it is for someone like me to take it slowly and ultimately I didn’t put the weight on overnight, so I’m definitely not going to shift it overnight.  But I think what slammed me further into the deck was listening to comments like “It’s only running for 5 minutes, I mean anybody can do that that’s a dawdle”  Normally things like that  I would just shrug off as chest thumping, but presumably because of the way I was feeling at the time, it really did feel a wee bit like a fatal blow to my already fragile, almost non existent confidence, and gave rise to these doubts to flow over and over and over in my head. In fact – you could say that this was the only thing “running” last week ;-)

For the last two weeks though, I have chatted this through with the absolutely superb JogLeaders who have totally turned my attitude on its head again.  They brought me round to a more positive way of thinking by highlighting the fact that I am gutted that I am not able to run 4x6 minutes is absolutely brilliant and rather than being a failure, it shows how much I have improved.  When I consider that at the very beginning the 10x30 seconds was even beyond my reach – I realise that they are correct – the fact I am getting down about something as insignificant as this is….. well actually quite hilarious really!!

So last night again, I never managed the 4x6 minutes, and again yes I was a little disappointed, but I can’t afford to be that way for long or I’ll never get anywhere.  So we decided we’ll just try it again next week, and the week after if needs be too, until I CAN do it. 

Back to those three questions from the first paragraph – “Is it time to chuck it?”  Absolutely not!  “Have I come as far as I can?” Not a chance – I’ve still got so much to achieve – and “Is it something I am just not meant to do?” No no no no no!  I can and WILL do it!