My point about the first part of this story, is that, well, I usually am in bed by 10pm and some nights I am in bed even before that. Working out every other day, and running the other days of the week make a body tired, and it needs sleep. Being out until 12:30am, and then not falling to sleep after 1:30am is kind of late for me. When I got home, I had to lay out my equipment, spray with a deodorizer, then make my way into bed. A lot of times it takes me a bit to just settle my body and mind down after playing hockey.
My alarm went off at 7am, and although it woke me up, and I got up and fed Squirrel (my cat); I went back to bed. I don't think I actually got out of bed until 8:30am, which is late for me. My body was just TIRED, but I had things to do today. Clean the horse stalls and feed them, feed the barn cats and let them out, let out and feed Lacy (my blind chicken), stretch, eat breakfast, put the brisket in the crockpot for Sunday's BBQ beef sandwiches, and get ready to go running. We also had a CSU Women's Basketball game to attend at 2pm.
Today's scheduled run is 6 miles, which is usually not a problem, except when your body is tired. But, I enthusiastically put on my new Skirt Sports GGU skirt #skirtsports, my Endurance Race shirt #ersevents, and my Shark Bite SoxyFeet socks #mysoxyfeet I got Riley ready to go with me, Tom got Belle ready, and out the door we went. I decided to go the Cathy Fromme Prairie Natural Area since it's close, and we were getting a little pressed for time since I slept in longer than normal to rest. We parked at the Taft Trailhead, and headed out. What a beautiful day! It was 51 degrees, a little windy; but the sun was out and it wasn't cold! It was above freezing, and it felt great. If anyone has walked, ran or biked this section of 'trail" (it is a cement path), you know it's not easy. It's a lot of rolling hills, and seems to all be uphill, no matter which way you go on it. You know, uphill, both ways. Not my choice for today, but it is one of the closest trails by my house that wouldn't be super muddy and sloppy from the melting snow and ice. Most of the dirt trails were closed because of mud by that time anyway.
So, off we go, so excited to run on this beautiful day. But, my body was telling me "hey, slow down, I am TIRED". The first 1.5 miles went by well, but at the turn around point, well now the trail is really uphill almost all the way back. The plan was to do this section, then pass the parking lot the truck was at and run west another mile, and turn back. This would be 5 miles. About mile 2.5 my body was sending me a clear message that it was TIRED. I started to think that maybe, just maybe running 5 -6 miles just wasn't what I should be doing today. Tomorrow is Sunday, and a scheduled 3 mile run; maybe it would be smart to switch the days. Of course I always want to just keep going no matter what, just push through it. About that time Tom said his hip was suddenly really bothering him, and he was starting to think that we needed to stop at the truck. However, he was fine if I wanted to keep running. This is the point when you need to learn to run smart. My body is tired, Tom's hip is bothering him, and we can run todays scheduled mileage tomorrow and tomorrow's today. We agreed to stop at 3.4 miles, and do 6 tomorrow. Why did we quit? Because we have both learned that the best thing to do is to listen to what our bodies are telling us. It's not worth pushing through some days, just to be worse off for doing it. Sure, there are times to push through and not quit, but that doesn't mean it's worth it all the time. We were happy with our distance, and our pace, and felt good about stopping, so we did. It was pointless to fight what my body was telling me. Sometimes you have to Run Smart.
Sometimes, in other aspects of your life you have to Run Smart as well, and to quit. I had a time in my life where I had to make a decision to quit. I will go into the situation later, it's just too late to start into that part of my life right now. The point is, there are things that just aren't going to change, no matter what you do. EVER. Things that are pointless to fight. It's just not going to change. For 7 years I fought a situation, struggled with it, and cried over it. It was a situation in my marriage that in the end had nothing to do with me, even though for a while I thought it had everything to do with me, and I tried so hard to change it. The thing was, is that I was afraid to ask to know the truth. I didn't want to know the truth, I just wanted to keep on running - wouldn't that be easier? Easier? With all the pain and crying? I sought advice from a close friend, he told me: "Just ask, and find out the truth". So, I took his advice and did. After I found out the truth, I realized that my fight was done, the fight was pointless. From that point on, I just quit. No more trying to fix something I couldn't, no more crying. It was time to move forward from that point. Run Smart, Know When to Quit. You'll be glad you did.
Riley and I at Cathy Fromme Prairie today (check out my cute running skirt from Skirt Sports)
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