Thoughts On The Weekend

Ahoy There!

(I know I have mentioned this before, but seriously, why do I find it so difficult and awkward to open up a post? I am often so torn on a simple “hello” message…) Phew mini tangent there, moving on…

I am now officially into my final week of classes, and of course, that much closer to winter break, aka several weeks of blissful nothingness However, an all too diligent thought has been in the back of my mind for quite some time now, but it is now sufficiently becoming a regular presence. It’s the thought that, holy crap, I am soon going to be entering my final semester at college… oh my. If this is not the ultimate reality check right now, than I am not too sure what is. Although I could talk about my crazy anxiety reflections on college and graduating for a few posts, that is for a later time.

Today is about the weekend, so let’s get to it!

I will admit now that although I usually make an effort these days to go out at least one night during the weekend to “step out of my comfort one,” well I was just not feeling it these past few days. There must be something in the air, or the fact that we are in the awkward and stressful few weeks before returning home for students, but there is definitely a vibe of blah-ness going around right now (yes, that is in fact a word).

My less-than-stellar attitude managed to take over any effort I might have felt like making to go out… Damn. As I am sure many of you can relate to, I am at the point where I am solely focusing on getting through my last few papers, exams and finals, and my mind is quite set on returning home.

Allow me to start on Friday, so I can get my head around where I am going with all of this.

For some time now, a reader of my blog from a nearby school have been exchanging emails about various topics, but mainly on subjects related to our disordered eating. We both found that we could relate to what each other were saying quite often, and continued to recognize this through the emails. So after a few weeks of conversation, we decided to meet up over coffee on Friday! We had a lovely time together while each pouring our hearts out about our experiences with an eating disorder.

I say this quite often as many of you do as well, but I am forever thankful for this community for many reasons.

Most importantly though is the fact that I have found I am not alone in this fight... far from it as a matter of fact. I struggle with this whole process on a daily basis, but knowing that their are so many others out there that are both rooting and battling with me, encourages me to keep pressing on.

This is why meeting this reader was such a welcome experience. Not only is it nice to connect emails and letters to an actual person, but I have also made a new friend. Additionally, I am comfortable talking openly about what goes through my head here on this blog, but actually speaking about it out loud is a whole different story. It felt great to just sit there and talk to someone, right out in public and just vent about it all, while also hearing what she had to say.

We plan to meet up again next weekend to take on a rather terrifying (for me) food fear challenge… yep I still have those. So stay tuned for that! I will give you a hint though it involves THIS:

The next day, it was time to make the decision whether or not to run in the Hot Chocolate 5k on Sunday. If you read my post yesterday you now know that I did (recap below) but actually making the final choice to was quite a difficult one. I feel like a major hypocrite for running in the race, as I had proclaimed literally just under a week ago that I was taking time off of running. It’s just, I couldn’t NOT run in this… it’s one of my favorite races of the season!

Once I finally made the decision to participate in the run, this automatically meant turning Saturday into a time of rest. Honestly, I found this particular rest day to be much more difficult to mentally tolerate than usual. For the first few hours of the morning, I contemplated going to the gym… oh I will only do 20-30 minutes of cardio; I should go and just do arms and core, that wouldn’t be too bad for me; maybe I could even job a bit today!

No. A rest day for me is complete sitting-on-your-butt rest… none of the “active recovery” stuff for this girl. I believe why I was distressed about not really moving my body for several hours, is because not only was Saturday an unusual day for me to take off, but I also have not been running at all the past few days, aka not working out hard enough, not burning enough calories, aka losing my fitness, aka gaining weight, aka getting fat, aka doom and gloom. Yeah, I think you get it.

I will have you know that as much as I truly wanted to, I did not give in to those silly, BS voices. I actually told myself that if I did go to the gym, than I would not be allowed to run in the Hot Chocolate 5k… one or the other. I chose the latter of course.

The race did not start until 10:00 am on Sunday, so a crazy-early wake up call was not necessary. I arrived around 8:45 to make sure I snagged a parking spot (parking in Northampton is a betch and a half), picked up my bib number and read and relaxed for the next hour. Oh and took pictures of myself to pass the time… There is no rhyme or reason to these.

Not sure what that awkward left arm is all about...

I eventually made my way into a building that was near the start and guess what rather wonderful person I ran into…

Weeee… Kiah from Good For Me Girl! This was not completely random though, as we had discussed meeting up before or after the race. I have met this lovely lady before, and it was great to see her again Check out her blog for her own recap when she writes it, not my story to tell!

I made my way to the starting line just five minutes before 10 because I was just too dang cold to chill out (no pun intended) in the freezing morning.

Aright, so get ready for some more hypocrite action from this girl. Yeah so remember that time I told you I was just going to jog the race, and enjoy the environment? Crap, I didn’t do that. Once I was in the starting chute and saw my usual pace group a few yards ahead of me, I felt quite compelled to begin at that area, and so I did. I joined the 7:10 pace area and waited for the start (with Kiah!).

I made another promise to myself that if I felt any pain in my leg at all I would slow down and jog the rest. Also if fatigue settled in, well there is no way to push through the kind of tiredness I have been feeling lately, so that would have automatically turned the race into a near walk.

At precisely 10 the race began! Now I am not much into recapping each mile, but I will tell you that I felt very strong for the first 2.5 miles and then started to drag toward the end. In fact my first mile split was 6:50, too fast for how I have been feeling lately. I ended up finishing the 5k in 21:38.

This is not close to my PR, but a respectable time (for me) nonetheless. What this race did show me was that, although my body is getting better and the iron supplements to seem to be working, I still have a long way to go, hence the fatigue that was getting to me after just 18 or so minutes of racing.

I did get me some free hot chocolate at the end though! Well not free as I paid for the entry fee… but you catch my drift.

Fun(?) fact: this was my first year at this race that I actually drank the hot chocolate. For the past two times I have raced, I happily accepted my mug and then took pride in the fact that I didn’t drink any of the creamy hot chocolate after, while every other racer “gave in” to it….ugh those freakin thoughts. I mean, I am pretty embarrassed to even reveal that. I “loved” the thin feeling after a race so much that I could not imagine ruining it by drinking a calorie-laden beverage.

So glad I am passed that (for the most part, I only “allowed” myself to drink half), as this hot chocolate was particularly tasty.

I suppose I am slightly annoyed with myself for running, as I went against what I had promised just a few days ago. But I ran it and it was for the right reasons and for the sincere fact that I love a road race and every aspect that is involved.

So not going to lie, I had I guess a…incident… later on Sunday that threw me for a bit of a loop. However, this post has gone on quite long enough at this point. Plus it is currently 9:30 pm (I write my posts the night before and then publish in the morning) so it is time for bed. Try not to be jealous of the ever-rockin lifestyle I lead

-Have you ever met another blogger “in real life?” If not, get on that, it’s rather fantastic Can’t wait to meet more in person! Kaitlyn, Lindsay and Alexandra, I am looking at you!

-Are you feeling the general poop mood going around right now? I hope not, and that it’s just me!

-What was the last difficult decision you made? Did everything turn out okay? In the debate of whether or not to do the race, everything worked out, but feelings of guilt for various reasons were there.

-Did you run any races this weekend? If not, what was your workout? Walking, hiking, gym, strength training, sitting on your bum? <– totes mc goats counts, it was my Saturday after all

-How was your weekend? Anything particularly interesting to note? Please share anything about it!

See you tomorrow or Thursday (Wednesday= WIAW) for some body image chit chat!

Tagged as: active recover, blogger meetup, Disordered Thoughts, Hot chocolate 5k, Northampton, Overcoming Fears, rest day, Running