I’m back! I think my last post was maybe last Friday, or even Thursday, a week ago. I ran my ultra last Saturday and have basically been just exhausted ever since. Today, for the first time since then, I feel almost if not entirely back to normal, and ready for a normal day of writing, work, cooking and even a run and a workout.
I always find it hard to get back into writing after a break but this morning I found it a bit easier to write my journaling and my 1,667 words. Not sure if I’ve explained that, but I start each day with a bit of journaling, using pen and paper. The focus or the starting point is usually to write down three things I’m grateful for. Sometimes it can take a bit of grumbling and working out some problems and issues before I’m ready to see anything to be grateful for! After the gratitude, which can take the form of just three items, or be a longer free-writing kind of thing, I will sometimes move onto my goals. If a topic really strikes my fancy, or if I feel like I need to work through something, I might write pages, but at other times I don’t have a lot to say.
After journaling, I move on to the computer and write 1,667 words. This comes from NaNoWriMo, National Novel Writing Month, which is a phenomenon that takes place every year where people try to write a 50,000-word book in the month of November. As a wannabe writer I’ve relatively consistently attempted to write 750 words a day for quite a number of years now, an idea that came from the website 750 words. But some time at the end of last year I was going through a really good patch in my writing and decided to take things to the next level and attempt to write a 50,000-word book in January. This equates to 1,667 words per day. And I enjoyed the process so much I’ve been doing it ever since. Although none of the months have produced what you’d actually call a book, I feel like the process of forcing myself to write such a large amount is helpful for me.
A little while ago, I decided to again take things up a notch and reintroduce blogging into my writing practice. I usually aim to blog most weekdays. Weekends can be a little too rushed in the mornings as I usually run pretty early, and I don’t generally like to write later in the day. So I don’t really know if my separate journaling, 1,667 words, and these blog posts are particularly different from each other. I usually try to edit my blog so that it would make sense to a reader, even though I haven’t attempted to publicise this blog at all yet. I had a blog a few years ago and I publicised it among my friends and on Facebook too early on in the journey. As a result, I ended up feeling under too much pressure and too self-conscious to write what I wanted. This time, therefore, I’m taking it (very) slowly.
I won’t write a lot about my ultra. It was pretty awful. Toughest thing I have ever done really in some ways. Physically at least. I wasn’t well enough prepared and it really showed, especially in the last 8 miles. I don’t intend to do another, ever. I’ve done four and I feel that’s enough to find out about myself. I know I can struggle on to the end (most of the time) and not give up (as long as I’m not inconveniencing someone else). I’m much more interested in being happy, going forward. I’m interested in whether I can tread the middle way, and find happiness through consistency, gentle effort, ease and flow, and knowing what I want. Through focus, self-belief, trust in the process, and actually letting it be fun. My intention going forward is to train for the half marathon distance as my main focus, with the hope that it will have a knock on effect on my 5k and 10k distances. And with the possible long-term goal that, if I do a good enough half marathon, then it might be worth attempting another flat road marathon.
My intention going forward is to deal with my anxiety, not by reaching for some bright shiny object, like an ultra, or some other “big, scary” challenge, but by calmly and consistently getting done the things that really matter. My aim is to alter my training just slightly so as to remove (hopefully) the big swings in form and the big highs and lows I’ve often experienced with my running, to create an only very slightly uncomfortable, progressive training effect, instead of the terrifying challenges that I’ve used in the past to motivate myself to take action. I have some confidence that I might be able to do this because I’ve already managed to do it with my diet and alcohol intake in the last few years. For a long time I swung between extremely strict dieting and binge-eating, no alcohol or too much alcohol, and I genuinely believed the only answer was to remove “bad” food and drink altogether. But it wasn’t. Since I’ve managed to find a more moderate middle way with both food and alcohol, I’ve found much more consistency in my mood, my weight, and my general health. I hope I can do something similar with my running, and eventually with other parts of my life.
So I have a feeling that my previous post was about dealing with my anxiety by getting ahead with my to do list. And I haven’t forgotten that and will continue to try to implement it. At the moment I’m still feeling quite tired after the ultra so it’s not quite the time to start tackling big tasks. But I’m adding the middle way to my list of projects going forward. Maybe it’s slightly at odds with the idea of getting all caught up with my to dos actually. Maybe there’s a middle way to be found with regards to my to do list as well? But I think I’ll leave that topic for another post.