Monday – February 26, 2007
Training: 63 minutes
Day Mileage: 9 miles
Week Total: 9 miles
Tuesday– February 27, 2007
Training: 62 minutes
Day Mileage: 9 miles
Week Total: 18 miles
Wednesday – February 28, 2007
Training: 20 minutes warm up
8x 1 minute
15 minutes cool down
Strength: AM: core strength (abs, back)
PM: strides
Day Mileage: 7 miles
Week Total: 25 miles
Josi's random thoughts…
"We are in control of our…destiny???
No…….in control of our baggage."
Inspiration…where does it come from?.....
I have been in a training slump, for a WHILE…But I had a revelation while I was in the shower today…sometimes I sing, sometimes I hum in the shower, and sometimes I have revelations… Tacky, tacky, Josi… Anyway, today I had a workout with the girls from Thun (from my running club) and I really ran for the joy of running, for the passion I have for running: today I ran with the feeling I had when I first started running about 10 years ago (man, I'm old). For the past almost half year, I have been running to get the runs done, to have it marked down in my log book, to have those miles totaled up at the end of the week… I had been worrying myself about "getting healthy," and "getting in shape," and "performing better," "racing better" and in the words of Jerry Seinfeld, yada yada yada. I had been running, but I had been running with BAGGAGE. Everyone knows about baggage. You know, you get into a relationship and everything is "hunky dory" at the beginning and then you start getting to know each other better and then all of a sudden, the baggage comes out………Well, I am talking about similar baggage, but with a relationship to running.
You know (a collective "you" here, sorry this means Josi is about to ramble once again), I started out my relationship with running at Oxford Area High School in 1996 having no idea what I had just gotten myself into----I was innocent, just loving to run the same mile and half mile loops over and over again without even thinking about it…Running a race ALL OUT even if it was just some lil' old duel meet with some other tiny school….Running for the pure love, joy, and happiness that it brought me. I ran with a free heart, a free head, completely trusting everything my coach told me (of course it was Skinny, so trusting was an easy thing to do) and "just doing it," to be very Nike and corny, but running with love and innocence…
Then somewhere down the road, my innocence started to fade a bit as I started getting to know who my competition was out there and WORRYING about it. In the early years of high school, I never had any CLUE who I was up against: I would just "mosey" myself to States and just RUN. Run, don't think (that was my motto). Well all of a sudden, I started to recognize names, recognize my competition and started to think, "what if she beats me, what if she out kicks me, what if I lose the State Championship (which I did my senior year in HS. I think I was one of the favorites to win, and then I blew it, I felt like crap though…) And alas, a bit of innocence gone, and one bit of baggage loaded on…
Fast-forward to the past six months. Like I said before, while I would go on these runs for the past half year or so (not EVERY run, but many), I would think, "oh shi, crap…I feel so slow, I HAVE to get back in shape! PANIC PANIC! OHmigosh, I can't even do a continuous run at a good pace, how am I going to get back into race shape. My legs feel like logs, how am I going to be able to even TRAIN fast…I have dreams of representing Switzerland and I can barely run sub 6 minute miles on tempo runs" and on and on it goes, and thus, I shall call it… "BAGGAGE."
But, we are in control of our "baggage," some of us just don't do anything about it: some just accept the baggage is there and let more and more baggage be loaded on…I've decided, that I'm a lot lighter on my feet without the baggage. Like today, I ran with the load off, and it felt good, not just good, but amazing…Now it's just a matter of keeping it off…
The important thing is that I've realized that if you let the worries go and just go out on runs and workouts because of the fact you love to run, and not because of the fact that you "need" to get in shape, the "getting into shape" comes automatically… In the end, it's not necessarily a change in what it is I do, but it's a change in the attitude in which I go about it. If I go on a 90 minute run thinking "okay, this 90 minute run is going to help me get in shape and I need to get in shape so I can run a good race, and if I run a good race then I can qualify myself for this, and if I …." and on and on OR go on a run thinking, "man oh man, what a great day to run," I'll choose the second option from now on… Again, it's a change in thinking. I mean, I guess this is all common sense, but common sense doesn't always come knockin' at the times it should…Sometimes, you gotta' wake up and just open the door and let the common sense in…I guess I just let it in and it's been knockin' for a while…
NEXT: March 1, 2, 3, 4 – XC over... bring on the roads...
PREVIOUS: February 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25 – Change is good. This is a big one.
INDEX: Unfinished Business -- Former PA XC state champion Josi Lauber's post-collegiate adventure