The Buck Stops Here

This installment has been a long time coming; three weeks in fact. In that amount of time I ran my first of three half marathons for the year (Lincoln), put in tons of hours at work immediately following that weekend, and, to put it bluntly, I lost my motivation and focus.

The excuses? There's plenty. The reasons? Are there really any reasons? Not really. It's becoming increasingly difficult for me to figure out the difference between reason and excuse. I can blame sheer exhaustion for a lot of my lack of motivation and focus, but in the end, it comes down to me.

This lack of motivation and focus has led to poor judgement, as it usually does with everybody. I was (and still am) on the quest for the perfect bavarian filled chocolate bismarck. I've been eating TONS of junk food and fast food, and spent way too much money while doing it; $35 in the past 2 weeks alone, and gained a few pounds in the process. I knew that was wrong, but I continued to do it, and in the process, Fat Connie crept from the back of my mind to the front of my mind.

So? Here's what's "So". The Buck Stops Here. I can CHANGE this and turn it into a POSITIVE.

I'm human. I should be allowed to make mistakes and fall off the wagon, but if I continue to do that, I'll let Fat Connie win the war. That's NOT about to happen. This lack of motivation and focus has also spurred me to get BACK on the wagon. During this past week I have started running and tracking my food intake again, and am focusing on my next half marathon (Buffalo County Stampede) on June 10th.

Today I watched the French Open first round match between #111 world ranked Virginnie Serrano and #5 world ranked Serena Williams. As you can imagine, Serena was easily favored to win, with 5 unbeaten records leading into the match, including the most consecutive first round wins (46). Both women struggled during the whole match, and Serena should have even won in the second set, being ahead 5-1. You could even see the emotion in Serena's face during her struggle to maintain the edge and was hard to watch. During the THREE HOUR match, Virginnie cramped, even lost points due to shouting during 3rd set but she was scrappy and pulled off the upset over Serena.

Relevance to "The Buck Stops Here?" There's tons of it. I'm a huge fan of the Williams sisters, but no matter what the fight, either big like defeating someone like Serena Williams or small like overcoming the urge to splurge on crappy food, if you can overcome the battle you can win the fight to continue to do your best to improve.  To me that's a fighter, that's what being an underdog is all about; that's a true champion.

Zumbarunner...Whether shaking it or running it, I'll cross the finish line!

Lincoln Half Marathon...D-U-N...DONE!

Lincoln Half Marathon...What can I say about it that it was SUCH a blast! The atmosphere was simply AMAZING! I got a high five from ELVIS, there were students playing the Japanese Katanya drums, some random guy playing his drum set in the back of his pickup, gave tons of kids high fives, a praise band along the way...

Our bibs also were personalized  with our names on the front, so I would occassionly hear "hey Connie, great job!". I also got a couple folks asking me if I was reppin Team Lizzie and thought it was cool I was, and I kept talking to spectators and volunteers along the route.

I even got to talk to Ben Davis this weekend, he actually saw me and recognized first! WOOT!

What an absolutely spectaculate experience!

Now, I need to crash...

Zumbarunner...whether shaking it or walking it, I'll cross the finish line!

Nervous? Who Me? Pshhh...Whatevs...OK, Maybe A Little

Yes, I know I should be sleeping. That's not the point, well, maybe it is.

In less than 36 hours I'll be hitting the streets of Lincoln for my first half marathon of the year, also my first Lincoln Half Marathon of my running career. I have heard many FABULOUS things about this run, so I figured this year, what the hell...

This is also the first race I've ever TRAINED for. When I did Buffalo County Stampede last year, it was only because a friend asked me if I was going to do it because she was planning on it. I took that as a challenge, and said OK. I think that was in about May, and the longest I had run was a 10k (6.2 miles). Last year was my first year actually RUNNING (EVER, like in my LIFE), and so I just pushed myself to run an extra mile each week leading up to the race in June. Let's just say that last year's half mile was BRUTAL, but I finished. It did take a toll on me, however...mentally, physically and emotionally, probably because I hadn't trained like I should have.

Lincoln is first out of three half marathons for me, next one is Buffalo County Stampede in June, and the third is Chicago half marathon in September. Unfortunately, and I'll admit it, I have been focusing MORE on Chicago than I have on Lincoln.

Fast forward to this year, and did everything I was supposed to do. I followed a plan, I added workouts, I sacrificed workouts (sorry Zumba...I WILL RETURN!), I (sort of) watched what I ate, until boom, a calf injury forces me to end my training two weeks early. This may be a blessing in disguise though, because it's forcing me to actually THINK about the race.

So here's where things get interesting. It's been said if you can run 10, you can run 13.1.  My longest run has been 8 miles THREE WEEKS PRIOR to race day (13.1). I have a (minor) calf injury, requiring me to get a calf wrap to support my right calf muscle while running. I've worn this twice, both times running very MINIMAL miles. Is my injury just a mental test to see if I have what it takes to run this whole race? Am I too afraid of what MIGHT happen that is making the annoyance of the injury stay there and lurk about when I run on Sunday? There's 10 THOUSAND people running on Sunday. Will I still be the last one in out of 10,000, or will I represent my bib number (9779) and be 221 away from being the last one to cross? Have I focused too much on Chicago that I've completely just let Lincoln fly under the radar? Finally, will I be able to cross in under 4 hours and 4 minutes (last year's hm time)?

These are all issues that, if I ALLOW myself, are making me a bit nervous about Sunday. The thing is, I'm hoping that all my training has made me strong enough to bypass most of these issues.

While training, I made a conscious effort to (try to) free my mind of any obstacle. Most of the time I was successful. There's a line in one of my favorite movies, The Last Samurai, where Tom Cruise's character is stuck in a remote village as a prisoner, and against his captors' wishes, starts training as a Samurai fighter. While being repeatedly defeated, one villager comes up to him and reminds him that he has too much on his mind. He's minding this, minding that, minding people watching. "NO MIND". He clears his thoughts and comes to a draw with the warrior he's been challenging.

"NO MIND".

That's how I hope to beat the nerves on Sunday.

Zumbarunner...Whether shaking it or running it, I'll cross the finish line!