Workout Wednesday: "This is supposed to be fun."

by Carrie Jurney DVM DACVIM (Neuro)

So, I have a race in two weeks. Two races actually. I'm running the Star Wars 10k and half marathon back to back in Orlando. 
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I have to admit, I've been a bit stressed about it. Life has gotten in the way of training recently, and I'm not where I should be. I'll finish- I'm too stubborn to do otherwise. I won't break any land-speed records to be sure. But as I was stressing out about it, I thought of something my friend's triathlon coach said to her. "This is suppose to be fun." 

As I've discussed before, I run for a lot of reasons. More than half of them are mental health reasons. So last week, I had to check myself a bit. Competitive me was getting in the way of healthy me. It's good to have goals. It's good to train and keep myself healthy- but in pursuit of that the solution cannot become part of the problem. If I'm running to improve my mental health, I cannot let myself freak out about my running. For Pete's sake, this is a costumed run at Disney- not the Boston Marathon. No one, literally no one, gives two shits about my time but me, and possibly my running coach. And lets not lie- my running coach is a fellow veterinarian colleague who coaches me because she was annoyed that I kept asking her running questions all the time (she's one of those iron man types) so I'm pretty sure she's not heavily invested. 
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Anyway. It was a good reminder. This is suppose to be fun and I shall now be treating it accordingly.