Conversations with a madwoman (me)

Well folks, today started off as a big day of suck. I woke up late, my project group in economics are a bunch of freshman that don't understand the word deadline, and my roommate is sick so she's at her parents house for the week, leaving me lonely and starting to feel cranky.

So I needed a really good run.

Well, that didn't happen. I'm discovering that with respiratory infections, the cough stays a long time. So I hit the streets jogging lighlty at a good 4.5 mph and immediately turned into a coughing spazz. Tried to gear it up to run and could only reach about 6mph comfortably, which just blows. Then my knee started to shake and I realized I'd left my brace at home. Then my back decided to remind me that it has issues too! Overall, I got to about a mile and a half and just stopped. Couldn't make myself go any further. Wondered about going to the martial arts room to fart around on their heavy bag, but knew I wouldn't get a good work out just going someplace unstructured. Decision time. Noticing I'm close to the gym, I figure that's as good as anywhere else, and head in. Make my way to the cycle machine, sit down, and hit the fat burner workout and just go for 40 minutes. Sweating like crazy by the end. Forgot how much I liked cycling, some of the toughest workouts I ever had were cycling classes at the Y.

Ultimately, as I was walking home, I still felt down. I'd had a surprisingly great workout, but it wasn't what I wanted. I was whining in my head to myself the whole way home, and began questioning the reality of my situation. It's been a month since I stepped up the cardio and I've only lost 2lbs. I try to eat under 1550 calories a day, but its hard to control your exact diet when your source of food is a cafeteria. I know I'm smaller, I'm down a size in Nike shorts! But the scales at competition don't care about your pant size, and I'm too short to compete in the weight class I'm in at the moment. It was just really frustrating, and I was being pretty hard on myself.

But as I was thinking, one of my favorite sayings came to me. No one has the right to beat you. Often said by one of my favorite fighters Ronda Rousey, it's something I liked to say to myself before fights. But thinking about it this time, I realized no one has the right to be me, including myself. I have no right to be down on myself when I had a good workout. I'm not in fighting shape, I know this. So why should I beat myself up over it? Like everything worth having, this is going to take work. Since this is more worth having than anything else except my degree, it's going to take more work than I've ever put into anything. I need to get over myself, and realize that the reason I'm not in fighting form is because I took two years off serious training. I can't expect to be amazing just because I've decided to do this again. It's going to take time, and I need to accept that and chill.

Now, I'm feeling really good. I burned some crazy calories. I'm gonna hit the cycle machine again tomorrow. Then, I'm going to have the run of my life on Friday. And I'm not going to let my stupid back, knee, or inner voice stop me. I'm not going to let myself beat me.