OCD training

Hi everyone! It's a cold and rainy day here in Houston. The sun came out just a bit earlier and then went away again. It's been a good day working from inside on my couch with my blankets.

After I had decided that I am going to run the Walt Disney Marathon, I had to figure out how I was going to prepare myself to do such a task. I have been discussing with my doctor about my apparent exercise induced asthma (I was hoping I would grow out of that!) and with her guidance to make my training gradual instead of exponential, I researched several different training programs. I found one for a 15K, one for a half marathon and then finally, the marathon.

For my 15K, I am following Hal Higdon's 15K training plan. I liked his cross training plan interspersed in the runs. Disney publishes a marathon and a half marathon training program written by Jeff Galloway that corresponds with their event and I was actually surprised that I liked his training plans better than some others. Plus, I could "splice" them together to get the gradual training my doctor was talking about. The thing I had to think about the most was burnout. I definitely experienced it when training for my 10K and that was only two months long. This marathon training is taking me 10 months! It would stink to get halfway through this and then it feel like a "have-to" instead of a "get-to." I'm sure I'll have a few "have-to" moments, but we want to keep those to a minimum. Disney's plan seemed to get the job done with three runs a week. If I keep up the cross training that I do in my 15K training, I am hopeful I will be able to combine all these trainings with minimal burnout!

So I concoct this brilliant plan right? I'm like, "Ok. This all starts Monday with strength training and stretching." Then I say, "You know what would be cool? I could blog a little bit every day and make it a bit like a journal! It would be so much fun to look back on after it's all over!"

You know what happens Monday? That's right. I didn't work out and I didn't blog. So much for that idea.

However, Tuesday rolls around and I just get out there and do the Tuesday run. Wednesday rolls around and I get myself to the gym in the midst of having to talk to almost everyone on the phone or texting them. Today rolls around and Jared and I go running after completing all our errands (just for the record. It's our first year of filing taxes on our own and we got it done by April 4th. That's right! No procrastination here! Props to my husband who really took the lead on this!). So thankfully I've only missed one day of training out of four. That's 75% right now. We can bring it up tomorrow to 80% (never mind that it's a rest day!).

What you need to understand here is that this is completely uncharacteristic of me! The thing is, back in college I would get so frustrated if I missed a day of my training plan. I wanted to complete it perfectly. I wanted all the boxes to be checked off. I wanted to get there the "right" way...whatever that was. But you know what would happen? I'd miss a day and get frustrated and start all over at the beginning and I would NEVER reach the end. In fact, I would never progress past a certain point and never get better! Thank goodness I've learned to forgive myself and forget.

So I guess the moral of the story is don't get so OCD about your training schedules (or anything else in life) that it causes you to never reach the goal you have at the end. We aren't perfect, but we have a Savior who is! Hallelujah!

So here's to me getting to blogging about all this by Thursday! Better late than never!