Stay the Same or Fight

The funk is over….I think

I've been feeling pretty good and making better choices with what goes into my mouth this week so I feel like things are looking up.

Our Easter was nice, I was hoping to get a nice family picture, but that never seems to happen.  I got two pictures of the youngest and the oldest. 

On Monday, I had decided to finally join LA Fitness because it is the most convenient and Fairview offers a corporate discount on membership and waives the enrollment fee.  I clicked the link from our website that is supposed to take you to the LA Fitness Corporate Membership page and kept getting an error.  I e-mailed the contact on the page and she said everything was working for her, so I called my mom, who also works for Fairview and it worked for her, so I decided that it was God's way of telling me he had other plans.

A couple hours later I hopped in the van to go pick up the kiddos and I got a call from our LA Fitness representative.  He had heard from the person I e-mailed that I was having trouble so he gave me a call to sign up.  So, I happily gave him my info and got myself all signed up.

Tuesday night I finally got the chance to actually go to the gym.  I went to the location that is closest to our house around 7pm and it was PACKED!  I was crying on the inside but decided to go ahead with it.  I'm still not very confident being around super athletic people and that is who was at the gym that night.  I got the run down on where everything was and then got my workout started.  I had a 30 minute run on the schedule for that evening so I scoured the place for an open treadmill and finally found one between two very thin, very fast, very fit ladies.  I typically start my runs at 5mph on my treadmill at home and do intervals between 5/5.5/6 over the 30 minutes.  I've been working really hard on trying to run consistently at 6mph, but I've still got a long way to go.  So I set the treadmill at the gym on 5 and was expecting to follow the same routine but I was exhausted after the first 5 minutes.  I'm not sure if the treadmill was faster than mine or if it was the heat or if it was self doubt….maybe it was a combination of all three.  I ended up walking quite a bit but made it through the 30 minutes and even got a tap on the shoulder from a familiar/friendly face.  After I got done on the treadmill I did leg weight machines for about half an hour.

I am very much looking forward to weight lifting and building some muscle.  I used to be able to lift so much more in high school and college than I can now, so I am hoping to regain some of that strength.  Thursday morning I went to a different LA Fitness location after I dropped the kiddos off and it was so much nicer and there were far less people, so I think I'm going to try and make that my routine.  I'm glad I have a job that allows me to make my own schedule most days.

Speaking of work, I am on-call from 7a Sunday to 7a Monday, since Sunday is normally my long run day, I needed to figure something else out for this week.  I took a look at the weather and decided my best option was probably running before work today and then making up some time on the weekend.  So I got ready before the kids woke up, dropped them off and then headed to one of the trails that I like to run on.  It was a little chilly but the sun was shining, so that was nice.  I had 9.5 miles on the schedule today and I wanted to focus on keeping a consistent pace, I was hoping to hold steady around 13:00min/mile.  Things started out well and I was staying consistent for the first 4 or 5 miles and then things quickly went downhill.  I forgot that part of the trail I was on is used as a cross-country ski trail during the winter and I hit a whole bunch of snow and ice about 4 miles in.  I tried to run on it for a while but then decided to bail on the trail and run on a gravel road that was close by.  The gravel was soft and it completely changed my stride and I quickly lost focus and started to slow down and eventually started walking.  I walked for almost a mile while I tried to re-gain focus and stop thinking about how tired my legs were.  It was a beautiful little farm neighborhood.  I saw a whole bunch of deer and tried to get a picture of them but they saw me and started running, there was also a nice little lake that I stopped to take a picture of.  

I kept waiting for my phone to tell me I had made it half way so I could turn around and head back and it seemed like it took forever.  The second half was brutal and I don't think I've ever wanted anything to be over so badly.  I definitely need to start bringing with something to re-fuel  mid run.  I was happy to make it back on clean pavement around mile 6.5 and kept waiting for my phone to tell me I had hit mile 7 and after I passed a mile marker that I knew would have put me there, I pulled my phone out of my pocket and realized that RunKeeper had crapped out on me and my run wasn't tracking anymore, I was disappointed, but just kept going.  Those last 2.5 miles were awful, I was so happy to see my van and be done!  My overall pace ended up being 14:00, so much slower than I was hoping for, but I am choosing to focus on the fact that I was deliberate in finding time to run/walk 9.5 miles. 

I had my heart rate monitor (thanks, mom!) with me for the first time, which was nice, because I had been concerned that I wasn't pushing myself hard enough on my long runs, but according to my heart rate, I'm right where I should be.  I was super relieved to have the HRM on because I was able to keep track of the length of my run even though run keeper stopped working and was able to edit the run to have a good idea of my average pace.

As usual, there were a couple of moments where God really seemed to show himself to me.  The first was right after I turned around, I was heading back around the lake mentioned above and the song "You Know Me" by Bethel Music came on.  That song always reminds me that God knows exactly where I am at all times and knows exactly what I'm going through, he knows everything about me.  So even on a dirt road in the middle of nowhere, God was with me, giving me the encouragement I needed to continue.

The second was just as I was heading from the gravel road back onto the clean trail, it was from a new song that I added to my playlist last night.  The song is called "You Decide" by Fireflight and the part of the song that hit me hard was this

God is calling out to you again
Let Him pull you, let Him take you in
From the fear that swallows up for your life
Will you stay the same or will you fight?

You decide
(Who will you run to)
Wrong or right
(There is no reason)
For you to hide
Only love can change your life

Will you stay the same or will you fight?  I have decided to fight, and I fought for the entire 9.5 miles today.  Some days I don't feel like fighting, but I have not given up.