Saturday 13 August 2016

Testing times

Doing 40 events before I'm forty seemed a good idea at the time 11 months ago or so. I knew it would tag me physically, but it has been the mental challenge in more than one way:
* having to wake up early to go to events more regularly than I did. Me and early mornings have never been friends and I will often have an argument with myself to hoick myself out of bed, particularly for parkrun.
*believing in myself that I can complete an event, even a 5k event, such as parkrun. Halfway round a distance my mind start telling me that's it's too far, that my body has had enough and let's just quit.
*The feeling that I can't be bothered, I'm too tired, I haven't eaten properly, finding a babysitter, it's too hot/cold, 

But here I am 26 events on now. Hauling myself out of bed, especially to get to parkrun. Fighting those inner voices which will continue to torment me, telling me I'm not good enough. 

I will admit, I will be glad when this challenge has finished. It's been a long haul, this year particularly. I've had to work hard to change my thinking and to fight the feelings of depression, and actually breaking the cycle of letting it rule my life; but instead regaining control, and ok, sometimes I can't be bothered to do X, Y and Z, but that's not depression. I'm being a lazy whatsit. I'm not denying that I've had depression, but this year I came to the conclusion that I really need to move forward and only I can really do that proactively, and not make excuses all the time. 

The weather has been really hot, and it has made recent events hard going. But last night I did take a  proactive look at my challenge, I now have 14 events left to do. Not including today I now have 25 weekends left to do 14 events. So I produced this:

Having written it out like this helped me to focus and look at where I can do events. If I really focus I can complete the challenge by Christmas time latest if I tried hard to get to parkrun each week, and find a few more events.

So I got this, right?