Best Laid Plans...

Over the past few weeks life has been BUSY! From trips all over the state to work related stress and all sorts of other "life" things I feel like I have been thrown around a lot more than normal. Not to mention the pressure I have put on myself to get things done for The Pain in the Canal Challenge. So a few weeks ago I had the thought of running longer but a little less frequently. Maybe 3-4 times a week with 10 or so miles for my normal day and a long run day. My thinking on this was that I needed to get my daily mileage up for my run in August anyway and as I get closer I would be able to start adding more miles to the runs and more days. I had a solid plan for my spring break from school and I was excited.

Spring break however was not much of a break. I ended up spending a lot of much needed time with my daughter and ended up driving the entire length of my run (Albany to Buffalo) throughout the week. With the meetings I had, the fatherly responsibilities, and a few unfortunate services to attend capped off with a packed Easter holiday schedule, my plans fell through.

My mental "go to" when things are not going my way or the way I plan is that I am not doing enough and I get in my head with this. It usually lasts for about a day or two and then I am able to snap out of it, but the fear of failure is real with this event! I am shooting for something that I have never come close to achieving while planning and organizing the majority of it myself and trying to train around a packed schedule. So how does someone like me get through these mental blocks?

I wish I had the golden ticket here! The magic bullet answer that would solve all the problems of fear in people. Today I am honestly wondering how Kevin deals with it! How does he deal with the fact that he has a fatal illness? What does he use as motivation to keep pushing himself the way he does?

When I ask myself these questions the mistakes or missteps in my training seem irrelevant and I am given a bit of a boost because in reality what the hell do I have to be afraid of? The worst thing that is likely to happen to me is I will embarrass myself and just look like shit as I beat the hell out of my body for a week! That is nothing in comparison.

So today I will focus on what I can do. This afternoon I get out of work a bit earlier than I normally do (Wednesday's we finish at 3) and I have a 90 minute window or so before I pick up my daughter. This gives me about an hour to get a run in before I have to start driving. During this run I am going to work on some of the mapping/direction questions I have that will be necessary to have hammered out on my run in August and hopefully also figure out why my watch is not sending a tracking link like it is suppose to (hoping just an update to the software). After all of that I will probably try to squeeze in another run this evening and see how many miles I can pack in today. The simple fact is that I cannot change the last week, I only can do what I need to today!

Later this week I am hoping to launch a YouTube channel dedicated to The Pain, training and reviews of products that have been donated to me for training including all of the wonderful shoes I have received! I will also post video updates of my training with the hopes that having a more fluent way of channeling my thoughts will provide me a lot more benefit and help me to get out of my headspace.

Please do not hesitate to leave a message here and let me know what you are going through with your training and how you are succeeding or finding motivation! Thank you for reading and look for more updates coming soon!