No More Stress!

I had a little mini revelation over the weekend. It was about my life in general, but running and working out played a part. 

I've been overloading myself, spreading myself too thin with favors for other people, or saying yes to too many things. Turning 30 recently has given me a much stronger sense of what my priorities are, and what I want to spend my time on and vice versa. I spent the last couple of days sending emails and making phone calls to cull a lot of the unnecessary things from my life, and it has made me a lot less stressed and happier already.

One of the biggest committments I had made for myself was the training for the half marathon this summer. Having trained for a halfie before, and knowing that I have knee issues, and not wanting to hurt myself by running too far too soon, I knew I needed to be very strict about sticking to the training schedule, and increase mileage gradually. There are only a certain number of weeks before the big race, and I didn't have any time to flub the schedule or I would end up hurting later.

Well, finding time to fit in long runs, even on the weekends, just isn't always possible for me right now. Yes, most days at work I have time to go for a short run on my lunch break. But sometimes meetings get scheduled, sometimes I have to work through lunch. And feeling like I was screwing up my training schedule was stressing me out.

Two weekends ago, I ran a 5K with a friend just for fun, and it occurred to me that I can do these shorter races, have a blast participating, and keep up with my running in a way that is *gasp* enjoyable and not one more thing that is an item on my to-do list. Running was becoming one more chore to get through every day; working out in general, it was just something else I HAD to do, more work, and so rather than relieving any stress it was making me more miserable, and so I was skipping it often and then feeling guilty.

Ugh, Enough!!

So, the half marathon is scrapped. I hadn't registered yet anyway, so good. There are a TON of super-fun looking 5K and even 10K races in the San Francisco area all the stinkin' time, and lots of great trails and paths to run on where I live. I do enough work and I have enough stress. I want running, and working out, to be a fun thing that I do, I need more fun things in my life. And once I ditched the self-imposed pressure and stress, suddenly, it seemed that way again.