Positive reactions

When I was younger, a friend once told me something that's always stuck with me. We were both going through break ups of respective ex (thank goodness) partners, and had been treated rather badly. He said to me "you can't control what other people do to you, you can only control how you respond to it". Thankfully these days I have much better taste in men, but I was just thinking about this quote the other day, for no particular reason other than I think about it sometimes, and I thought how it can apply to other things as well as to men. 

Specifically, I was thinking about this after a running related incident, which isn't an overall surprising point.

Bad runs can't always be predicted, I've noticed. You can skip out the door into the sunshine, trainers neatly laced over your eager feet, mood bouncing along with the light fluffy clouds in the sky, the run that you've been looking forward to all day is about to begin, 10 miles of joy awaits! Then boom, one mile in and disaster strikes. Energy levels plummet, the mood darkens, 9 more miles seems further than eternity. This funny thing happens where I suddenly feel dizzy, my arms tingle, stomach feels empty (actually empty, not hungry), I feel hot/cold, and panic sets in. This happens quite often, not always when running, but it is completely inconvenient when running, that's for sure. I originally thought that this was something to do with not eating at the right times prior to running, but this theory has been quashed, as it seems to be rather random.

Two miles into my 10 mile run with Andrew on our recent break to Dartmoor, I had a meltdown, ground to a holt, told Andrew to go on without me (in a rather dramatic way), and gave up. After much persuading, Andrew carried on, but not before leaving me with a spare banana. Which I ate, while wandering along, watching Andrew's neon clad figure disappear into the distance, and thinking about how terrible this all was. I can't even run 10 miles, oh no wait, not even 2 actually, what delusional fool am I to think I can do 100? And what is wrong with me? This is all rubbish. I'm rubbish. Nothing ever goes right. I must be doing my training all wrong. This can't be normal.   

Then I stopped. Initially because I'd got to a gate and couldn't work out how to open it. But it served the purpose of giving me something to think of other than my immediate woes. OK, so this is all pretty rubbish, I thought I was well prepared for this run, there doesn't seem to be anything in particular that I didn't do right, but I'm not feeling good, that is a fact, and I can't change that it's happened. I can change what I do next though, I thought. Much like the aforementioned quote from wise friend, but replacing the bad man part with a bad run. I can devise a strategy to deal with such situations, to help myself through them and out the other side. And surely, with the wealth of difficult running experiences I have to draw on, this can't be that hard. I might be given a bad run, but I can make it good.

This sounds like it all took ages, but actually it was all over quite quickly. I finished my banana, walked for a couple of minutes, and put a plan in place. I reduced my expectation of daily mileage. I told myself I would run another mile away from the house, and re-assess how I felt then. If I still felt rubbish, I would then walk until I met Andrew on his way back. If I felt good, then I would run a little bit further. 

So I got another mile, during which I reached a 1/4 mile long deserted tunnel (no lights), which resulted in me running quite a lot faster to get out the other side, whilst thinking of the ghosts of Dartmoor reaching their bony hands out of the walls to grab me and pull me in to the darkness, to join them in their ghostly underworld. This further reset my mindset, and coinciding with about the same time as the banana kicking in, I shot out the other side of the tunnel like a bat out of hell, ran a total of 4.5 miles away from the house, then turned around and headed for home. Then I realised that I hadn't entirely run along the same route that Andrew had, and so our plan of meeting up might not work. Spent a puzzled few minutes running up and down the same piece of path looking for him, until finally we we ran into each other (ran, ha ha!), and headed back home. In the end I did 9.3 miles out of a planned 10.

Which is all a very long and convoluted way of saying what I really wanted to say, which is this. If things in a run aren't going well, stop. Take a moment. Break things down. Take it step by step, and just see how many steps you can get. Take on a little food and water. Breath deep. Look around. Stop thinking you can't do it, and think of all the reasons you can (seriously, once you start thinking of these, you will come up with so many that there won't even be a tiny corner in your head for any negative thoughts). Maybe even write them down once you get back, so you can keep them on hand for future situations. And add to your list every day! I ran 9.3 / 10 miles, which I felt really pleased with, considering how rubbish I felt at 2 miles in. 

For me, it's about breaking my cycle of negativity, which as you might have picked up from enough posts from me by now, is a pretty much continuous cycle, that sometimes goes round so fast that it's quite dizzying. Breaking this cycle, even for a moment, slows it down, and gives my mind a chance to readjust. And, going back to that quote, meeting a negative situation with a positive reaction. 

And there ends today's philosophy.