The young and impressionable

So here’s the skinny, as I entirely could have predicted by the time 5 PM rolled around I had zero desire to go to the gym.  My body was exhausted and there was a strong part of me that was like perhaps you should just take the night off or call it a light night because you have worked pretty hard the past 3 days and you have a couple more days this week to go.  I debated in my head all of my options.  The thing is I did not run on Monday and I really needed to run.  My plan called for a 3 miler and I really felt like I at bare minimum needed to do that.

My options were to go to the gym and take Amanda’s 5:30-6:00 PM class and then run my 3 miles.  Go to the gym and just run the 3 miles.  Go home and run 3 miles.  Or the last option which kind of naturally happened when I spoke to my mom which was go to the gym and run my 3 miles and then do an upper body workout with her.  Even though I was tired and really felt like it needed to be one of my lighter days I talked myself into going to the gym.  I convinced myself it was okay to skip Amanda’s class because I needed to run.  

I got on the treadmill and the first 5 minutes were brutally painful.  Like mentally so.  Like I did not want to do it at all and I thought for sure that running 3 miles was going to be torture.  I was barely 5 minutes in and you wanted me to do another 25 or so minutes of this.  Not fun at all. These my friends are the tricks the mind plays on you to get you to quit doing healthy things. Running can be torturous.  I completely understand why a casual exerciser would hate running.  You get on there and start and even my brain wants to tell me how awful it is and that I should quit after a couple minutes.  In fact, even all the way up until mile 2 I was hating every single second.  I literally watched the time tick by on the treadmill and wished that I was somewhere else, or that I liked this more.  Or that I didn’t have to run so much.  And alas, it is in these moments that the real “training” occurs.  Under non-training circumstances I am sure I would not have ran last night.  But these training runs when you hate them are what make you a better runner. They give you mental stamina and force you to run on legs that might not want to.  Mentally they are important.

I have not missed a single training run.  I have not done less than the desired mileage, in fact clearly at this point I am way ahead of the mileage.  We will see if I can hold this pace for the next 80 something days. I don’t know. Probably because I have some sort of weird mental condition where I do not feel happy or satisfied unless I literally tick all the boxes on my training plans.  It’s not really a tick it’s an app that crosses out the runs with a big line thru them as they happen.  And for the life of me if I had a run and it wasn’t crossed off I think it would cause me severe distress.  Worse than the pain of actually making myself endure some of these runs.  I do allow myself to slightly alter the days or distances to better suit my schedule so long as I hit the actual weekly targets, etc.  For instance today I am supposed to do 4.5 miles and tomorrow only 3 miles. I am probably going to flip these.  I most likely only have time for a 3 mile run tonight whereas tomorrow I’m free to run longer.

Anyway, after mile 2 things got a smidge easier. Or my body became more relaxed and in tune with the fact that I was running. Sometimes well most of the time I feel the best around mile 3.5 or 4 and thereafter so it’s not shocking to me that I can’t get into a total rhythm in a 3 mile run.  But I did it.  That is the important part and when I was done I was so glad that I had sucked it up and just ran the 3 damned miles.  Then I didn’t really have anything prepped as I had no idea what my actual intentions were for the day and only ultimately decided to go to the gym with mom after work in the car as I was trying to decide what direction to take the car.

Mom had a little workout sheet from Amanda that she gave her with an upper body workout day, a lower body workout day and a couple other little workouts.  It had like 8 exercises on it, for different  muscles of the upper body and I was like, sure let’s do that.  My heart wasn’t like 1000% into it but it was better than nothing.  So We started into that workout and the first 4 exercises that we did 4 sets of were chest presses, pushups, bicep curls and then shoulder presses.  I was doing my thing, lifting, etc. Minding my own business really. I mean talking to mom of course but still just trying to crank out some tough stuff at points.  At this point Amanda’s 5:30 PM class had finished up and out walked Amanda and a couple girls who took the class. One of them was clearly new, I had not seen her before, and she was definitely overweight but not what I’d say insanely overweight.  But she was also clearly young I could tell.  But it was more here demeanor that caught me.

I was lifting and she was like standing in the gym and made a random comment about she wasn’t sure what she should do now.  It was slightly directed at me so I responded with yeah, sometimes it’s hard to figure out a plan and I end up walking around aimlessly.  I was trying to be nice.  She said she just started back at exercising. She had a baby and now she’s been exercising for like 5 days.  I got the vibe she was waiting to talk to Amanda, but another woman was in there with her.  So she sat down on a bench and ended up watching me lift.  Like hardcore staring at me.  Like it wasn’t even subtle at all. I got the vibe like she was trying to figure out what I was doing to copy me maybe. I don’t really know but for a few seconds it felt crazy awkward.  Like I slightly had a stalker.

Finally as I was doing some shoulder presses she finally stared right at me and in a low voice said, “You have a really good body.”  I know it was a compliment and I took it as such but for a second I was thrown off guard because of the stalker-ish way it was said.  So I said, Thank you.  I kind of looked at my mom who had observed this whole incident and gave her a weird look and then she said to the girl, “well, she didn’t always.”  Mom wasn’t being mean it was clearly evident that this poor girl was having some self-esteem issues and was looking for help and/or guidance so she wanted to help the girl by explaining that I wasn’t born this way.  I said yeah, I have lost a lot of weight in my life.  I used to be like 225 pounds.  And of course she was like, how long did it take you to lose it?

I hate this question. I hate it a lot because the answer is that I did lose the weight in like 6 months. But that is not normal or something that I entirely advocate. That is done with constant diligence and my incredible over the top obsessive compulsive personality. I try my best to not give clearly impressionable people faulty information.  So I said, well, somewhere between 6-8 months but that was with an incredible amount of work.  And of course I did not look like this after that.  I lost weight and I was thinner but I didn’t have any muscle.  I said it’s taken me 2 years of working out a lot to achieve muscles.  She asked if I worked out a lot. My mom kind of chuckled and said, yes.  I said, yeah I work out a lot.  I don’t expect nor think everyone in this world is going to have the same desire, drive or quite honestly as much time as I do to devote to working out.  I would never want to lead an impressionable young woman astray so I try to be as real as possible.

Based off of some of the things she said I could clearly tell that she was slightly lost, terrified and looking for guidance.  Thus the casual stalking of Amanda looking for answers.  She did take Amanda’s class last night and when Amanda was free to talk to her advised her to come to her class tonight which it seems she intends to.  We will see.  But with all this said, this was the first time in a while that a random stranger has ever said to me with longing in their eye, You have a really good body.

This is a weird thing for me to hear. I spend so much time picking apart all of its minute flaws and imperfections that it’s easy to lose sight of some realities.  To a young woman just starting out, I do have a good body and am someone to look up to.  That the woman I was almost 3 years ago would have looked at me and been envious and certainly would have thought that I had a good body now.  I would have killed for the body I have today. Even though I spend most of my time frustrated or searching for more, that to the outside world, perhaps a small portion of it, I have already obtained a good body.  It’s not perfect, it’s not tiny thin, it’s not a lot of things but what it is is healthy, strong and real.  I have a body that I would expect most women who are larger would desire to obtain because it seems more real.  I have most likely the best case scenario body that they can obtain given their own genetic makeup.  I am curvaceous. I have hips. I have thighs. I have meat on my bones but in a good way.  I was born to be a little more curvy and that’s just the way it is.  So yes, taking a step back I suppose to someone I do have a really good body.

It was an interesting experience for me and humbling and a reminder of why I keep doing the things I do.  I truly do want to help people and empower other women to believe in their own abilities.  There is not a single thing more rewarding to me than to inspire or help in any way a young woman who doesn’t believe in herself or give her hope that its possible.  Although it’s a little creepy when one literally watches you so intently. But nonetheless I don’t ever want any young girl to feel like there isn’t hope. I am truly physical proof that anything is possible.

So yes, tonight it is a 3 mile run and then Amanda’s strength training class and that will be good enough for me.  Tonight is also day 5 in a row of exercising.  Day 5 and 6 tend to get really rough for me.  Day 6 will literally just be a 4.5 mile run and then I will be done and Friday will be rest day.  One day at a time. I am also just as certain that tonight I will have to force myself to the gym and force myself to run.  But God forbid I miss a run, that just isn’t going to happen.