Epiphany

Decided to take killer dog for a long speed walk today.  My goal was 45 minutes and hopefully 3 miles.  0.3 miles in my shins were screaming, my lungs hurt, my legs and hands were cold, my left inner ear was having some weird strong pains, and I was thinking of an exit strategy.  I started thinking about how I could just come home and not upload my Nike+ info and people wouldn't know that I only did a third of a mile.  I thought about how I wasn't as fast as I had wanted to be.  The marathon is less than 8 months away and I don't even want to WALK a 5k, let alone run 26.2 miles.  Since I was going through a subdivision near me it would be easy enough to just cut straight across to go back home and be with my heating pad and Tylenol in less than 5 minutes. Then I was thinking that I am going to fail at this marathon training.  At first I figured, I could probably walk a marathon.  You have to keep a 16min/mile pace to complete it on time and Jan 1st I figured that was doable.  Now I am thinking that I can't walk for 15 minutes, let alone 6 hours.  That's just crazy!  

When I go for walks with Edie, I LOVE it.  She loves it and the dog loves it.  We take our time, look around at the trees, the houses, the landscaping, try to find bunnies...it is really enjoyable and more often than not we end up walking twice as far and as long as we had planned.  I say we will go for a quick 15 minute walk and the next thing you know, we are heading home because it's been 45 minutes and it is starting to get dark out.  

So I took a deep breath, looked around, and said out loud to myself, "Erika, just slow the crap down and enjoy the walk!"  I looked for bunnies, noticed the colors of the houses, checked out the decorations on the mailboxes, and in general made a point to enjoy a nice leisurely walk. Every so often my mind turned back to doubt about the marathon and how I wasn't walking at NEARLY a training pace.  But I would make a conscience decision to snap out of it and just slow down and look around.  I walked out to the tall trees that Edie and I love to check out. 

In the end I walked for 1.35 miles and 30 minutes.  I had to head back home for work by that point.  However, in the first .3 miles I was thinking about how many reasons I could come up with to not walk the next day.  The last 1 mile, at a much slower pace (but still with an elevated heart rate), I realized that I can increase my time and SIGNIFICANTLY decrease my dread by just slowing down and trying to make it more like an enjoyable walk and less like a painful road to marathon failure. Here's hoping for a naturally faster/longer cardio workout while making a point to work on my attitude during the workout.