You can. That was yesterday’s lesson learned.

I woke up yesterday morning, with every intention to do a run. Truth be told, I wasn’t as into the idea of running outside and I was leaning towards doing a Peloton running workout in our gym once I took care of something for my dad. That something that seemed like it would be maybe a half hour…maybe an hour of my time turned into my several hours but thankfully, all is okay. I didn’t get my run in and my watch was showing a lower than usual step count. I told myself that I would still be able to train with Jeff later on in the afternoon but a run was pretty much out of the question and I wasn’t all too sure that I would have the time or the energy to do a walk.

That is so unlike me…sure, there was some time here and there to do something but I wasn’t feeling the idea of getting my steps up, just like I hadn’t felt the idea of running earlier in the morning. Something turned around in the mid-afternoon though, and I told myself (yes…I have a lot of inner conversations with my conscience) that I could and should and more important…would get some steps, however many I could manage. I wound up doing a 1.2 mile walk on the treadmill before my training session and I walked 1.9 miles from an appointment to our place. I was quite surprised when I checked my step count at bedtime and saw that it was 14,000 steps.

I texted Jeff the number – 14,093 – and wrote, ‘on a day when I thought I wouldn’t get much activity other than training’ He responded with a thumbs up emoji.

I had a plan for today that included a run and I knew it would be some time in the afternoon, after I had returned from doing my measurement assessment with Jeff. I had walked a good amount of miles earlier in the morning and I was at a pretty good step count by the time I headed out to his house at 1 but I still saw some kind of a run in the mid to later afternoon.

I toyed with the idea of running outside and I even had a route planned out for a two plus mile run around the neighborhood but something was telling me that I needed to challenge myself and that challenge wasn’t going to come with a run outside in the heat that was bound to be mediocre at best. I had had a lot going on in my head — some little things to worry about and some not so little things that would undoubtedly distract me from putting my all into an outside run. I knew that if I did some kind of workout on my new treadmill, it would keep me focused and centered on what I was doing in the moment and I could put everything else aside. The phone was put on silent mode and I had managed to pair my air pods with the treadmill so I couldn’t and wouldn’t hear anything else around me. I didn’t need much in terms of a run but I wanted it to be something that would push me a little bit.

I searched the Peloton class library and found a 20 minute 80’s pop run that included some pace targets which I kept at the maximum number for everything but the so-called hard pace. I tried not to think about my kids or my dear friend who is facing serious health issues or what’s going on in the world at the moment but in the end, I feel like I ran with all of those things and used them as the fuel that kept me going. I ran to run away the stress and the sadness and the scary feelings but all of that made me run like I haven’t run in a long while. I ran with feeling and with drive and I even ran with some feeling of hope. I can’t fix those little things and those not so little things that I am worried about and that keep me distracted but for 20 minutes, I was able to run it all away.