Encouragement
Like her ugly step-sister Discouragement, our fair lady Encouragement is an intermittent guest. Tonight was yet another “I’m not feeling this at all…” night, but I finally got my ass out there and ran.
I felt like I wasn’t doing as well as I had done in previous nights. I kept slowing my pace to a walk, gasping for breath, and then picking up again.
Then I realized something; my pants were falling down. Literally: falling down. I had to stop to pull them up on several occasions. I don’t wear a belt with these pants because I don’t need to. They stay up on their own. But not tonight. (on a side note, please don’t ask why I wore jeans to run tonight; it is a laundry logistics issue.)
Encouraged, I kept up my pace, even stopping many times to pull my pants up. I started picturing myself 30 days from now, at the Expo Icrontic (a huge gathering of friends from all over the place, many of whom I’ve not seen in a year) and having people notice that I was thinner. I got lost in this line of thought for a moment but I kept running. I realized that getting my mind off of how much it sucks and hurts actually helped me forget so that I could keep going. My mantra of “oh god. this sucks. oh god. this sucks” faded away into a reverie of imagined friends saying “holy shit, Brian; you’ve lost weight”
The best part is this: These are not my fat jeans. Everybody has a pair of fat jeans. You know the ones; the biggest pair of pants you ever bought. Your fat jeans.
My fat jeans are big on me now. They are impossible to wear without a belt.
To top off my encouraging moment, when I got home I still felt that my pace wasn’t good and that this was not my best run. I sent my results to BuddyRunner and sat down to write this blog entry. I checked my status, and saw that in every metric, this run was better than my last. Longer and higher paced; my final bit of encouragement before I go to bed.
You're right, pants falling down are an incredible motivator. Be prepared though, as you continue to progress. Losing weight is expensive. You'll need to buy a new belt (or a belt period), new pairs of pants, eventually new shirts. When you keep at it long enough, you'll find yourself buying an entirely new wardrobe for yourself.
But that's money happily spent!
It's easy to focus on the negative while running. I do it all too often. It hurts your performance. But you're learning the true counteraction to that. Positive thoughts. Think of what you're going to become, how people will think of you, ect. It helps add that boost at times when you need it most.
It's kind of stupid, but I envision myself in situations requiring the run. Sometimes I see the end goal of my run far in the distance, and I make myself think that I'm in a marathon or something, with friends and colleagues at the line awaiting celebration. Or that I'm in a movie or a doomsday scenario running to save my life (or perhaps that of another person).
Man, it seems even stupider in writing.
But that kind of crap keeps your mind busy, and before long you forget your running and how much it sucks, and you find yourself at the finish.
I've got a ridiculously active and visual mind. It wanders when I run, and it certainly helps.