No other physical activity destroys my spirit and makes me feel worse than running. None other.
I have SO many negative emotions that are attached to running. Because of these emotions, it doesn’t matter if we are doing sprints, 400s, miles, 5ks, or whatever. It doesn’t even matter to me if I actually do well! To me, it’s always horrible. I could PR on something and in my head, it’s still horrible and most likely, I really hated every second of it.
By now, I am SURE you are asking, “but why? why on Earth would you feel this way!?”. Come along, friends.
Let’s back up for a moment.
Picture if you will, the years 1992-1994, a 12-14 year old Bryan in 6th-8th grade. Picture me really fat and out of shape. My diet sucked, I watched a lot of TV and played a TON of video games. I wasn’t really active.
Imagine a cocksucker asshole gym teacher* that made us “run the mile” once a week or so. For most of the kids in my grade, this consisted of something like 7.5 relatively easy laps around the schoolyard. You’re a kid and have boundless energy. What’s a mile? Nothing more than a means for the cocksucker asshole gym teacher to tire a bunch of high energy kids out, really. I watch the Dog Whisperer. I know what’s up.
As you are probably guessing, it was not really easy for me. In fact, for me, it was anything but. It was lots of walking, pain, trouble breathing, people looking, staring, talking, making fun. All in all, it was a horrible experience that made me want to slit my wrists. Every. Single. Fucking. Time.
I would always be last or near last to finish, which meant that everyone had to watch as I attempted to jog my fat ass around the schoolyard. The longer I took, the longer they had to watch. Middle school kids aren’t very encouraging, nor was the cocksucker asshole gym teacher. In fact, he was quite an asshole and cocksucker to boot. Eventually, I learned how to feign sickness/dizziness so that I wouldn’t have to suffer this humiliation. I would rather kids think I was sick than make fun of me while I tried to accomplish this task.
Fast forward to this morning. A beautiful “winter” morning here in Cedar Park, Texas.
I got to CFCP this morning in relatively good spirits for the New Year’s Day WOD which was:
- Bottom-to-bottom Tabata Squats – scored by lowest round count. Mine was 10. Feh.
- 1 Mile Time Trial in 10:24. We just did 4x on the 400m route.
It must be said up front that the people at CFCP are awesome. They are encouraging. The coaches are in no way anything at all like my cocksucker asshole gym teacher and the people that go there are in no way like the kids in my middle school gym class. Yes, I completely understand that all of this negativity is in my head. All of it. It’s brought on by me and can really only be done away with by me.
The idea for this WOD was to do the bottom-to-bottom squats, then the mile with no rest I between. Technically, you *could* rest if you really wanted to but the clock for the mile started as soon as the squats were done.
Anyway, so I start running and like 90% of the people in class just go on past me. I am used to this by now. Everything hurts. I can’t breathe. I feel slow, huge, and overall, just bad and loserish. On top of it, my headphones keep popping out of my ears and frustrating the shit out of me. I have to fight with myself to just keep going. I didn’t take any walk breaks, but my pace is terribly slow. In fact, I may as well be power walking with some AM/FM stereo headphones in the mall.
Eventually, people that started at the same time as me are LAPPING me. At this point, all of that negative chatter starts and I am again reminded that I’m the fat, slow kid. Depressing, really. As I come in for my final 200m, I can hear people encouraging me to finish strong which is great. I still feel terrible. Just awful inside.
Clearly I need an attitude change. I recognize this. Pulling that off though, is a whole other story. It’s a monumental feat for me to remain positive in these situations. Clearly, the things that happened to me during that dreadful time of my life are still affecting me. Sad, yes, true, very much so. I can say, pretty much without hesitation or thought, that those were the worst 3 years of my life.
I am really looking forward to this “I Do The Impossible” challenge starting. I really need something to get my positive energy and momentum going. Apparently, my coach “has a plan” for me and all I have to do is “comply”. I can’t wait to see this plan and get to it. While I am incredibly proud of my friends and the progress that they have made, I am sick of not being the one making progress. We shall see.
*I hate this man and would happily beat the ever living shit of him on site. No, I don’t care if he’s like 70 now. He had it coming.