With the beautiful and inspiring summer months upon us...I've decided to use all of this natural energy for good and not evil! I've decided to challenge myself to overcome by biggest vice...!The same way that we all have our little secrets, we all have our vices that more times than not, tend to get the better of us every now and then. For many people it's the obvious ones...smoking...eating...drinking... shopping ..boys...you name it!! I, however, have always had a rather tumultuous relationship with...numbers!
It doesn't really seem to matter what it is but, the numbers always appear to be out to get me! It's the numbers that don't add up on my math test, the number on the scale, the numbers on the clock, the numbers in the bank, the numbers we owe the bank (!!!), the number that you come to be at the end of a race, the number of kilometres it took to get there...whatever it is, somehow "X" plus "Y" never seems to add up to "enough".
All of this is a challenge at the best of times but, unfortunately for me, I also have a passion that is less than conducive to a dislike of numbers! For three years now I have been "on the run", training for 10kms., half marathons and marathons. As great as running is, like most sports, numbers are often the measuring stick by which you judge your successes; the number of kilometres you run, the speed at which you run them, the number of minutes it takes you to get to the finish like, the number of times that you run in a week...and so on and so on. One's obsession with numbers (namely mine!) sometimes has a habit of taking on a life of it's own and taking away from the pure joy of being in motion.
So, this is where my summer challenge comes up! I have decided that for the next four months I am not allowed to associate any numbers to the activities that I do. I am not allowed to take our GPS out with me when I run (so I can't keep track of my distance) and I'm not permitted to keep track of the number of times that I run or the time in which I run. This summer...running will be done solely for fun!
I guess the idea is to give my body the opportunity to find its own balance and see what happens when it's active for different motives. Although this challenge somewhat intimidates me (because I write EVERYTHING down...aka. I ran 673.28 kilometres in 2005!), I am looking forward to spending some time listening to what my body needs as opposed to listening to what the training schedual needs. Though I'm sure that it takes far more than just four months to change of lifetime of "vices"...I do have faith that four months is atleast enough to put the "versa" in motion!-Gen
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