My turtle is inching along

Today I passed to 600 mile mark for the year. I know that I'm excessively number focused lately -- weekly miles, average pace, weeks to go to the marathon, percent raised for NSAL -- but this one is a fun one to keep track of. I did 6.09 miles today (average pace 10:30/mile, good good) and that put me over the 600 mark. That tells a real tale. It's not like I was fit and athletic on January 1st and the 600 miles were part of an established routine. I was about 50 lbs heavier and I had *just* started to get back into running. In January, I was thrilled with myself if I could run 1 minute and walk 2 minutes and keep that up for a half hour with a 15 minute/mile pace. Now I can go for miles and miles and my average pace has come down over 4 minutes/mile.

I think that's important for me to reflect on today since tomorrow is gallbladder day and it's going to be a setback for my training. I'm trying to be confident that I'll recover and in a few weeks I'll be right back where I need to be with my mileage but I'd be lying if I said I wasn't worried about it. I'm not even sure if it's my physical strength I'm concerned about. I've proven to myself that I can push past where I thought I could go with physical activity.

What I'm more concerned about is taking myself out of the game mentally. I've been SO focused on my goal that I never once allowed myself to consider not getting all my training in. Now I'm going to have a break in that focus and I'm terrified I won't get it back. I noticed it even this morning. I took today off from work with the intention of getting in a good run before they slice me open tomorrow and after screwing around online and doing some housework the thought loomed large, "Eh, just take today off. What's another day when you're missing a whole week?" That was scary and sobering that I may have worked hard this past year but I'm a lazy defeatist at heart. I've been working so hard on transforming my body but I haven't made all that much progress in transforming my mind.

I quickly shook it off, got on my running stuff, and did a nice 6.09 mile run. At the 40-minute mark I felt the runner's high kick in and I was smiling and singing and feeling out of this world. I've GOT to hold onto that. Next week when I'm tired and sore my mind is going to pulling out all kinds of excuses why I should take it easy and not run. I can't let that happen. I've got the marathon and I've got my little turtle up there to think of.

So wish me luck tomorrow. I'm an afternoon surgery because he is fitting me in which means I'll be sitting around all day getting more and more anxious. I hope I'm not so late on the schedule that they won't let me go home the same day which I've been counting on. Ugh.