Lacing Up

OK so I was going to make this a week long revampage reveal, but I decided I had enough of the mini-series stuff with the WIBA reports. Yeah, I know, you're welcome ;) So, here it all is, warning - long freakin' post ahead.

Well, I have what, 7-ish weeks before Ironman right? So, in order to get my crap together before then I sat down and did a little thinking. WIBA put a lot of things into perspective for me, and some of the subsequent problems I've put upon myself have been uncovered as a result. I'll start with listing the major ones, and then talk about the root issue, deal?

OK, four giant problems:

1. Outside of training, I probably drank about 4 oz of water - if that - a day. Not sure what happened, I used to drink a ton of water and then it just kind of... trickled off.

2. I let myself drift into night owl mode again, going to bed around 11:00-12:00a.m. I was pretty good at being in bed by around 9:30 or so for a while, and then that just kind of fell off as well.

3. I was cutting out whole food groups and relying on processed instead of fresh foods for convenience sake - for example, bread completely went away, so did really most grains. And you know those individual turkey packages in the lunchmeat section of the grocery store? I'd throw two or three of those in a bag with about three apples for the day, maybe also one of those Healthy Choice frozen dinners and call it good. Gah. I got double whammied on this when both my coach and my friend (who's also a coach, trainer, and all around awesome chick) Lauren Muney, both said the exact same thing on the same day, like an hour apart: "Sister, you have to eat a variety of whole foods!"

4. I was being overly critical of my successes and failures.

More on the resolution of each of these in a minute, but first the core issue:

OK, remember when I was saying I realized I wouldn't say negative or harsh things to anyone else, not even strangers or people I disliked when they were in a bad spot, yet that's all I said to myself when in one: ...just deal, get over it, stop being so pathetic, blah, blah, blah... ? Easy to see how doing this to anyone else would make them feel like crap too, like I wasn't listening to them or worse, was passing judgement or didn't even care. Not to say that there's not a time and place to rally and push through something, but there's a tactful way to communicate this.

(See, ok a little history first - in the beginning of this endurance training I used to be all about 'shut up and do it,' but I realize now that bullying myself like this was the root of all my problems - I just flipped it to the temporarily more productive extreme. Instead of bullying myself about the fashion magazines and why I sucked because I wasn't a size 2, I bullied myself on training runs and felt I sucked until I could push the pace under 9 minutes per mile. THEN, I was good enough - that is until I got there and wanted even-closer-to eight-minute miles.

I know had I achieved those, the next thing would have been sub-eights (now, I'm not saying there's anything wrong with continually wanting to improve, but when goals are the result of feeling you otherwise suck if you don't achieve them, it's an unhealthy cycle).

I think I've conditioned myself to believe, ...oh, it's just me, it doesn't matter... with these kinds of behaviors; like I can treat myself however I want to. This is really amazing to me because I'm the opposite with anyone else, I'm probably even annoying with how much I try to take care of and look out for other people in my life. And this makes me wonder if I'm perhaps overcompensating to some degree for not taking care of and looking out for myself...hmmm.

OK, got off on a little stream of consciousness there, but the point is all of these things I've been doing wrong stem from that ...oh, it's just me... feeling. I think a lot of women - stay-at-home-moms and career women alike - especially find themselves bound by this mentality. We're so geared towards taking care of everything and everyone around us that we forget to include ourselves. Man, I'm so going on Oprah.

All right, so all that said, the bulk of the revamp is this folks - I need to do for myself what I'd do for anyone else I cared about. This means:

1. I'd never thow a single-serve package of turkey and an apple or a Healthy Choice frozen dinner in my kids' lunch, or let them go all day without fluids, so why am I doing it for myself?

2. I'd never make my kids stay up so ungodly late when I knew they had to get up for school the next day, so why am I making myself?

3. I'd never think my friend who finished Ironman in 15 or 16-something hours was any less awesome than someone who finished in 12 or 13 hours. So... why am I worried about this for myself?

Lauren told me, "Trace, look how far you got in Ironman last year with these detrimental practices - only seven miles short in those conditions?? Just imagine how far you can go with productive practices."

That, was motivating.

Now that I have this all straight in my head, I have to make sure I stay on track. Here's what I came up with, as hokey as it might be I know it'll work. I'm a person who really benefits from tactile reminders, so I'm going to get some old shoelaces - one from each member of my family's old shoes - and I'm going to braid them into a bracelet as a little insurance policy. Every. Single. Time. I entertain ideas of ...it's just me..., I'm going to look at that thing and remember how I'd feel, what I'd say, and what I'd do if it were my family in my shoes. And then I'll say/do the right things for myself.

OK, we'll see how the new lines play in Racine for dress rehearsal this weekend.

Practice...

Practice...

Practice...