My first in-person practice with Without Limits (Greenville) was last night. I was a little nervous and a little overly aware of being out of shape, but this group is nothing if not friendly and accepting of all levels.The workout included 12 x 100 @ 90% effort.
I think I know what 90% effort is, so I went out at just under a full sprint. It felt FAST. It felt like I was blasting it. It felt like I must be doing this wrong, because I'm going faster than other people.
So, instead of being like, woo hoo, this feels great, I had a totally misaligned thought about everybody else not doing them correctly.
After about 3 or 4 reps, I went back to Matt to make sure I was supposed to do them at 90%, even if I thought I couldn't finish them all. Just checking.
At some point, Matt mentioned something to the effect of me being fast. Boom.
Apparently, I’ve been looking for a permission slip to be fast, and didn’t know it. Once he was like, huh, you’re fast, I was finally like, hey, maybe I am fast. Oh, I should definitely explore this! Yessss….
And I got really, really excited.
On the drive home it dawned on me that I had run a whole lot of ultra’s because I believed I was old and slow and therfore relegated to the arena of ultramarathoning. Don’t get me wrong, I have big love for ultra’s, I will still do ultra's (albeit faster!), and I wouldn’t give up my VolState memories for anything in the world.
But loving ultra’s and feeling like that’s all you can do are two different things. I’m now excited about running fast. Really fast. So fast it will blow my mind and everyone else’s, too.
I wanna be the poster girl for #oldfolksgettingitdone.
And I know I’m on track (pun intended) because I have this feeling in my stomach like I’m one of the little ducklings in my facebook cover photo- like I just jumped out of my metaphorical running nest.
Holy Shit- I jumped!! AAaaaaaaagh!!!
Fear….!! Excitement….!! Exhilaration….!!
LIFE!!!
OMG, what if I fail? What if I DON’T fail? Aaaaaaagh! It’s so gooooood!!!
