Self Destruct

I have a cold. Bugger, butt, freaking, fucking sucks. What the hell.

It's like it knows I am running a half marathon on Saturday. Though I'm thinking that if it stays where it's at — slightly scratchy throat, head full of snot — I can deal with it. I've run on worse. Full-throated, seal-bark-hacking bronchitis? Done it. Pounding, foot-thundering migraine? Ten-four. Flooded with snot and aching with fever? Definitely.

I'm not saying they were the best or smartest things I've done, but it's doable.

Unfortunately, I think it means more "tapering" than I was hoping. So, less running.

I'm an odd duck. If I'm actually injured or sick, all I want to do is prove that I'm not and go run and do what I really ought not to do. However, when I'm not, I have no problem thinking, "Oh, my knee is twinging a bit. I should stop." or "Eh, I've got this teensy tiny headache that isn't really anything, I should rest." However, when I full out sprained my ankle (tore a ligament) freshman year of high school I was playing ultimate in my immoblizer boot (until the P.E. teacher called my parents), and when I had bronchitis senior year of high school, I ran coughing and hacking up a lung until my parents forbade all activity faster than a leisurely walk. Two years ago when I found a hole in the water while running to meet some friends who were swimming and collapsed in agony (having rolled my ankle black and purple) and had to be carried (and dropped) wet and sandy by my two guy friends from the ocean to the car and from the car to the house, I tried to run on it three days later. And was out of commission for a week and a half because of it.

Really, I'm a bright crayon, I promise. I just have something to prove.

Apparently.

God knows who I'm proving it to, however.

This serendipitiously leads me to the topic I want to address. I am being a bit of a copycat, as this is on the heels of reading my lovely friend's latest post, but I simply cannot help it because what she says is so true.

You are your own worst critic enemy.

She describes being unable to see the day to day changes as you get in shape, lose weight, whatever, and that is true to a point. I often have days where I look in the mirror and have a "when the hell did that happen" moment when I realize that my belly's flat (ish) again, my legs are toned (thank you, running!), and that lingering ten pounds has become muscle (slightly padded) rather than fat (with lots of padding).

But then the fat days hit.

You know what I'm talking about. We all have them. Every single one of us. Guys too, though us girls tend to shut them down when they do.

(EXAMPLE: my 150-lb. 6-foot-tall boyfriend, five months ago before I started running:
Him: "I've been feeling really fat lately."
Me: "Remind me how much you weigh again?"
Him: "150."
Me: "You are six inches taller than I am and weigh the same as I do. I don't want to hear about it.")

The fat days are those days when every sweater makes you lumpy, all your pants make your ass look big and your legs look short, all your shirts cling in all the wrong places, and you just want to cry rather than face getting dressed and going out to work. You settle for comfy rather than cute because cute just ain't gonna happen today. So what if you look like a bag lady, everything makes you look like  a bag lady today, and not in the waif-esque, Mary-Kate-And-Ashley-bag-lady way.

Caitlin of Operation Beautiful recognizes that we all have fat days. We all have days that we are uncharacteristically unhappy about our appearance for one reason or another. We all have days where a simple comment is misconstrued or just being in public makes us well up because we question our own self-worth, self-beauty, and self-in-general.

According to Operation Beautiful's "Fat Talk Free" article, "Fat Talk is extremely triggering of unhealthy behaviors, whether the comments are consciously processed or not. Putting yourself down verbally creates reverse inertia in all aspects of your life. Instead of getting healthier, Fat Talk will motivate you to overeat, skip your workouts, and stay involved in toxic relationships. Additionally, even if you don’t ‘hear’ your own Fat Talk, your friends and family members will, and it harms them emotionally, spiritually, and physically as well.  As Jillian Michaels said,'Fat talk is transcending….  It affects your reality and damages you professionally, personally, and physically.'"

How often are you crippled by your image? The way you look? The way you feel about the way you look?

I'm certainly not above it. I've got shitty days the same as the next person. And my point is that it's not always about being beautiful. You can have ten extra pounds and still know you're gorgeous. You can dress like a bag lady and still get compliments. That's not the point.


BEAUTIFUL is not the end all, fix all, whatever. You being happy with your situation, your job, your eating habits, your excercise habits, your friends, your life, being happy with you is the deep-down issue.


I agree with Operation Beautiful's mission, and with my lovely friend who says, "I always find it interesting how grateful and touched people feel when you compliment them on anything, weird, as you really think this would be common practice and could make the world a happier, more confident place to be." It's congratulations, it's appreciation, it's affirmation and it's not about beautiful. It's about you. It's about being who you want to be, doing what you want to do, and eventually reaching that goal you've set for yourself. Beautiful implies solely exterior, when the focus — true happiness — is when everything is balanced: interior, exterior, environment, goals.

Life is hard for most people most of the time. That's the bottom line. There's nothing easy about life, not even living it.

To Write Love On Her Arms website's vision statement says, "We wake to mystery and beauty but also to tragedy and loss...It is our privilege to suggest that hope is real, and that help is real."

Hope is real.

Love is real.

Loving yourself is real.

I'll dare to say what thousands have said before me: nobody's perfect. Let he who is cast the first stone.

It's not about beauty. It's about you and the difference between what you know and what you see and eventually making the two line up. Life sucks. It's hard. But it wouldn't be interesting — or worth living — if it weren't.

And with that deep and cheesy ending, I leave you to go ponder less-deep things. Like how to deal with this damned cold.

Ciao,
kc

MONDAY: 1.25 hrs flow yoga
SUNDAY: 7 miles
SATURDAY: bummed out and did NOTHING
FRIDAY (8/6): 4.5 miles (including 10 hill repeats, starting at :44 sec, ending with :30 sec)