Running Out Of Steam

It's been a week since my last post.  Life has kept me busy, but that's not really the reason I haven't blogged.  I've had one of those weeks where I am just tired of the whole thing.  Not the blogging part, just the journey part.  It's hard to stay encouraged.  I've stayed the course, but it was tough this week.  Keeping my spirits up is half of the battle, and this week it felt like a full on war.  

I usually try to blog about something uplifting, informational, funny, or interesting.  But today?  Today I just want to blog about how I really feel....which is none of those things.  I decided I would rather be a little bit of a downer, and keep it real, than to not blog at all.  I do still have some nuggets of happiness and encouragement in my mind, but they are stuck in a logjam behind my utter disdain for this leg of my journey.  I definitely need to clear this mental blockage to get those good feelings flowing once again.  So here goes....

The thing is, it hurts to run.  I have a lot of extra weight crushing down on my skeletal system with each running step.  Sure, my muscles are fatigued, and it's still kind of hard to catch my breath a lot of times, and I still get the occasional twinge of pain in my heel (the one that has the torn achilles tendon), but that's all to be expected.  They don't call it a "work"out for nothing!  If working out were easy, I would have achieved my weight loss goals long ago!  But the crushing weight on my skeletal system is just so rough.  

It seems I'm in this sucky catch-22 right now.  I have to exercise to help my body shed the fat, but the fat is making it hard to exercise.  It's really hard to run with all of this extra weight, and it's even difficult to get into certain yoga positions.  My own body gets in the way, especially the extra weight in my belly.  Imagine strapping a big bag of wet sand to the front of your body and then running like that, or trying to do the "plow" position in yoga.  Yep, that is basically my current reality.  It's really hard.   That is what it is like for me.   

The funny thing is, as I just typed that last paragraph, I thought to myself - "What a whiner."  The image of Bill Murray in What About Bob? popped into my head - "I'm doing the work, I'm taking the baby steps, but I need, I need, I neeeed!"   It's not whining though....it's being honest.  I am still pushing forward and continuing on this journey.  I am not making excuses.  And I am certainly not quitting.  I am just blogging about my realities...in the off-chance that someone reading this is on the "struggle bus" as well.   

The struggle is real.  But I think we can get through this rough patch - together -  one back-crushing step at a time.  Will we ever achieve the elusive "runner's high"?  I don't know.  I am not even certain that that is a real thing.  It seems more likely that I'd run into Bigfoot pumping iron at the gym.  I am not even sure, just yet, if I can even achieve jogging for 15 minutes straight.  But even still, in the face of all of this uncertainty, I honestly feel deep down in my gut...my big fat gut...that this will all pay-off in the end.  It will all be worth it.  I may never experience that euphoric endorphin rush from running, but something tells me that it pales in comparison to how fantastic it will feel simply finishing the race.  

Power on , my friends.  Power on!