Just one of the stories of my summer. I have this love-hate relationship with running. And last week I kind of hit a real bottom (like falling down the old rabbit hole) and tearfully told my coach I was quitting. He sort of talked me out of it, well, he just humoured me. I'm sure he's done it many times, but of course, I thought my misery was special. I really did do a number on myself, it was like I was 300 pounds again. It happens from time to time, I go back to that very dark place. I'll have a bad day, or a string of them, and suddenly I'm in that place where I'm a big lumpy failure.
Now, in my running group, I can safely say I am one of the slowest. We do these interval trials on a small route fairly regularly, and I'm always being passed by these younger, fitter, genetically different atheletes. And then there was the night when we did a 5 k to see how fast we could do it. I was dead last and not having fun AT ALL. It was hot and I wondered why the hell I was putting myself up for this misery. My head was throbbing and my chest couldn't get enough air.
All that was fine and good, I was within reason to be frustrated. What happened next was where maybe I crossed some sort of mental line into crazy. Emotionally, things got very, very dark. I was a loser. I couldn't do this. I quit. Give up, uncle. This life is for others, not losers like me. After the run was over, I walked to a quiet area of the park and cried for a long time, until I figured out I had marooned Fuzz at the parking lot without the car key.
I was in a bleak mood for the rest of the night. The miracle was I didn't eat over it. I had a long e-mail conversation with my coach about it, and I'm still processing it. I'm not feeling nearly so bad now, I'm back to regular running, but the whole event has been interesting as a demonstration of where my brain can go, possibly when I'm not careful about my mental hygiene. It's likely no coincidence that this happened while both my sponsor and my therapist were out of town, and I was only hitting one meeting a week due to holidays and home reno.
