How to stick through the hard parts.

#60M2IM Day 24/100

There’s really only one step here. Good news is, you already know what it is.

Nike said it first: Just do it.

Stop thinking about the long game. Don’t worry about the Ironman, the bestseller, the pot of gold — just think about today’s two minutes of running, today’s 500 words, today’s whatever it is.

It’s humbling, this whole starting from less-than-zero thing.

This three-blocks-away-from-the-couch-to-Ironman thing.

So humbling.

Today started month two of my snail-slow Couch-to-5K (the one that takes 28 weeks instead of 12.) Today’s goal: walk 28 minutes, run 2.

Let’s just say that run is a relative term here.

My walk speed is 3 miles per hour. My run speed is 5 miles per hour.

Which means that I’m going to have to not only build up from 2 minutes of running to 30 minutes of running, I’m going to have to run about a mile per hour faster. (Actually a little faster than that.)

What I did today was right exactly where I am. My heart rate was in the right place. My exertion level was in the right place.

I have that pinging thing going on in my quads, which takes me right back to my athlete days.

And I’m utterly humbled by the fact that I’ve embarked on a goal that’s going to require me to run more than 26 miles, after taking ridiculously long bike ride, which comes after swimming two miles — and walking/sort-of-jogging 1.5 miles is right where I am today.

And it took me most of two years to get there.

My two minutes of running today was broken into four chunks of 30 seconds each. So four times I had a 30 second opportunity to think: Oh, fuck. I’m too fat to do this. It hurts. I can feel my legs driving into the ground. I’m going to hurt myself. I can’t do this. I can’t. I can’t.

I always go straight to blaming all hard things on being fat.

It was true once. When I weighed 368 pounds, I might have hurt myself trying to run.

But I’m not there anymore.

Where I am is the place millions of people visit and hang out and the bail from. The place most people turn around and go home from, instead of moving through.

The hard place.

The scary place.

The place where it would be so, so easy to say: I can’t do this.

I’m sticking. That’s all it’s going to take. Sticking. And finding a way to be okay with taking two years to get to the place where I can run for two minutes without hurting myself.

I’ve done this before. Not this this. But something like this.

I’ve stuck with writing through years and years of learning how to write well.

I’ve stuck with marriage, even when it was tough.

I’ve stuck with taking care of my brothers when our family life was chaotic.

I know how to stick. So do you.

Day: 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14. 15. 16. 17. 18. 19. 20. 21. 22. 23.

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