Many of you who have read my posts may know I suffer from chronic back pain. Lots of stretching, trips to the chiropractor and frustration go with it. But something I have learned from running is to keep a positive attitude in the face of adversity. It NEVER helps to be negative. Just never. Yet it's so easy to go there.
As I gently, lovingly, harrassed my friend Scott about getting in shape, he expressed the frustration about how it sucked to be so far behind everyone else in terms of running, or being in shape or whatever.
His frustration, while valid in every way, still called for some type of insult on my part, because that's just how our friendship works, but instead it got me thinking about the Triathlon I did last weekend.
I completed my first Triathlon last summer (which is a subject for another time, another post) and enjoyed it enough to try another. After a whole winter of learning to swim, and a shorter period of more intense, race specific training, race week approached. about 7 or 8 days out I began having pain in my lower back that radiated down my leg. Sciatica to be exact. I've had it to varying degrees many times. That far out, I figured it would pass by race day. It did start to improve but then for whatever reason, it flared up again, bad, just 3 days before the race.
My first reaction was anger, and frustration. Didn't I just spend months working on my swimming so I could do this distance? Didn't I put in several hundred miles on a bike attempting to improve my cycling time? All just to arrive on race day at a disadvantage. But then the new attitude me spoke up. But rather than paraphrase, I will just copy and paste the coversation we had on Facebook messenger!
-
you should revist the couch to 5k plan
- and sign up for a 5k to FORCE yourself to accountability to finish it. And I'll run it with you.
-
- ...howboutnooooooo
- I may consider that.
- sure why not
- you were gonna do it before
- when I get down 10 more pounds i plan on getting back on the couch/5k again.
- right now I just walk/run as I feel like it for that amount of time
- 3 times a week
- which is an improvement from sitting at this desk
- just a thought. Goal and a few bucks spent for race registration could be good motivation.
- that is true...competition is really good for me but I am so far behind everyone at this point it is a real drag for me to think about.
- No, not competition. Only a motivator. Competition in running is only for the 1%. The rest of us compete with ourselves.
- I know, I like competition though...is what I am saying, I am a sayer of things
- like when we competed to lose weight that one time
- sure, but first you have to compete with yourself to finish the distance.
- yeah...I just hate being behind the curve so far...it pisses me off and makes me want to not do it...I know that is whiny but just being honest
- behind what curve?
- of everyone else
- that IS being whiny. And it's not true.
- there is no everyone else. You don't do this sh*t to compare yourself to everyone else. You do it for YOU
- one giant change that has happened in my life from running is I've learned to have a positive attitude.
- I refuse to let certain things get me down.
- I didn't used to be that way
- sometimes when my back flares up I want to lay around and waller in self pity
- but I know the best thing for it is a positivie attidue and to keep going, keep pushing thru the pain
- I tweaked my back several days ago
- right before the race
- and my first reaction was F*CK, I did all this training and now my effort is going to be for sh!t
- and I let that last for about 10 seconds and said what the hell, this race isn't the destination
- all this training wasn't for one race
- it's for my life
- its for what it does for me as a person
- so what if I can't do as good as I want
- it's a journey
- there will always be another race to run
- dude, put that in the blog
- motivating
- and amazingly enough, my back hurt right till I jumped in the pool
- and it loosened up from swimming
- I didn't even feel it during the bike
- and by the run it had completely dissapeared
- and didn't return until almost 48 hours later
- wow
- seriously put it in the blog
- it was almost like doing the triathlon cured it
- and in a way it did, I'm still a little stiff but it's getting better everyday
Hope you enjoyed a afew moments of our personal interaction. There is usually a lot more cussing and insults flying about.
But I hope you got the idea. I could have given up and not raced but I did it anyway, and I felt way better for doing it. In fact, I felt AWESOME. Often, exercise can help loosen up stiff muscles and get bloodflow and healing going to the affected area. It is often a matter of just figuring out something you can do that doesn't hurt too much.
So, when your in pain, when you're injured and you want to sit on the couch, DON'T. Unless you're under doctors orders. Find something to do. Find a way. Make a way. And use your mind for good, not evil. I believe the mind is capable of healing our bodies in ways we can't yet begin to understand, and there is plenty of evidence out there to support this theory.
Don't get mad, get even.
And
NEVER.
GIVE.
UP.
