The Mother Load

I ran once this week.  Once.  I'm full of excuses for it.  I'm also choosing to be kind to myself and be reasonable about the kind of week I've had.  I started 3 new jobs this week: coding for a data analysis firm, writing for Examiner.com, and copyediting for a publisher.  All of these jobs are part time.  None of them will take as much time as they did this week.  Starting meant training and reading and learning much of what I need to know to do them.  It was not a normal week.

Of course, I did that in addition to the writing I'm doing for Mahalo.com and my blogs, continuing my full time studies at the University of Utah, and spending significantly more time with my family (which I won't trade for anything.)

Is that an excuse?  Maybe.  I'll tell Michelle to let me have it during our training call today if she feels so inclined.  I hope she does and I hope she doesn't.

I'm considering a new mantra.  I thought about it during my one and only run this week when Richard mentioned I've increased my speed so much that my counting is again off; only this time, I'm finishing my run cycles too early instead of running too long.  I had a moment of discouragement, picked myself back up, and ran again.

In the end, I decided it's not that big a deal what the timer says.  Well, it is and it isn't.  I do need to pick up the pace and lengthen my runs each week, and I will use my running plan from Phazes as my guide.  However, I'm borrowing a phrase from Alcoholics Anonymous as I do this: Progress, not perfection.

If I strive for all perfect weeks, I'm doomed to fail at this endeavor.  If I take it one day at a time, I will succeed.  I'm running longer than I was when I started.  That's progress.  I'm running faster than I did when I started.  That's progress.  I haven't admitted defeat and gone back to my sedentary life despite how much I don't like to run.  THAT'S PROGRESS!

So, there you go.  I won't promise to be perfect this week, but I will make progress.  My goal is to run the full three times, and I'll repeat the 3 minutes I was supposed to do last week.  It will take an extreme amount of time management on my part, but I'm willing to do that.

Oh...and I've lost 8 pounds.  Just...fyi.  *wink*