The Shift

 

So here I am again, after not having posted in like 2 weeks. Oh I’m back! yes, you’ve all heard that before. But please, let me explain.

The last few weeks – well months, 8 months to be exact – have been increasingly rough over here. Stress was mounting, and after my last race everything really went to hell. Here’s the deal. In April I got laid off, then just before my official last day, I was offered my job back. Then every few months there was some sort of event that could possibly lead to me being laid off again. The last of which was a 12/31 deadline, end of the program contract. While it was never much of a concern if we would get a new contract, there was a concern as to whether or not it would include the budget lines for my coworker’s and my jobs. It is possible that much of the stress and worry was manufactured internally (by both her and I), but we’d been burned before – when we were all least expecting it.

Yesterday afternoon we got news that everything’s going to be fine. Program’s a go, at current spending levels. boom. I cannot even begin to describe the weight that’s been lifted. Even so much so that I didn’t terribly mind having to stay an hour and a half late, on a Friday, and getting locked in the stairwell (apparently they lock the doors at 530.)

So, back to the past few weeks. Things got really bad for me. There was little to no working out, a ton of eating shit, and nearly 0 sleeping. Recipe for disaster. I knew it was happening, but I was literally paralyzed by fear and worry. Sometimes despite all our best efforts, we can get swallowed up by negativity. Every time I got enough motivation and stamina to workout, I felt better, but replicating that on a regular basis just felt impossible.

After getting the work news yesterday afternoon, I called my dad to discuss christmas ideas for my mom. My dad’s an endorphin junkie, so I knew explaining to him how much I was looking forward to a carefree run today was going to be completely understood. I just wanted to run, and smile, and not worry about anything except the sweat dripping in my eyes.

I passed out by about 930 last night and slept like a baby for the first time in at least 3 weeks. I woke up at 530, without an alarm, ready to go. Due to the fact that I have approx 0 running gear for running in the dark (it’s on my christmas list), rather than wait till it was light out, I hopped in the car and opted for a treadmill run. One of the work outs I’ve been doing lately to kill TM monotony, is to cover the display with my sweatshirt and then bump up the pace every 2-4 songs. Today I pounded out an awesome, smiley, sweaty 5.5 miles with an average pace about 20 seconds/mile faster than my 10k PR in September. Granted, today I was on a TM with a 1% incline, and that 10k PR was on a seriously, seriously hilly course. But holy pace, batman. I felt freaking awesome. People were probably seriously weirded out by my redonk smile plastered on my face the whole time. But who cares? I got my mojo back, baby!

The other awesome part of my job situation being resolved is that I can finally start to put into action my 2012 race goals! That’s another post – one that won’t take me 2 weeks to write, I promise.

I’m off to bake a serious amount of cookies – to SHARE, don’t worry.

 

Happy running, folks!