Hello, friends. Well, life is certainly showing us right now, isn’t it? While I don’t mind the social distancing (actually I’ve trained for this all my life), I miss the feeling of safety. Mentally, COVID-19 is messing with me. I know it is safe to go out and exercise— even our Governor is encouraging us to go out there and get some fresh air— but me, in my Doomsday mentality keeps thinking:
“What is this thing mutates and we are not safe out here?”. I attribute this to all the zombie movies I watch with my husband.
“What if the cold air makes me sick and then I have an at risk-immune system?”
See where this is going? Now, let’s be clear— from the top photo you can see that social distancing while running is pretty easy for me because I live in farm country and there is no need to worry. So, I am sabotaging my own fitness efforts right now. I have been doing a lot of stretching at home and a few elliptical sessions but there has not been any motivation whatsoever. I even had the option to do the Marine Corps Historic Half virtually, but instead I deferred to next year (so impressed they had that option). My heart was just not into it.
Then April arrived and we are finally seem to be coming out of the winter spell (fingers crossed) here in Minnesota. We are having more spring-like temperatures and on Sunday we had a 63F weather that had me reaching for my running shoes, lacing up those bad boys, and heading out for the county roads. It was a perfect day and I felt some of my motivation coming back. a few times during the run, I just walked because… I don’t know— I just felt like walking and taking it all in. And it did me good. My little soul needed to take it all in. Interestingly, I found myself talking to God while I was walking. Not prayers, but having a conversation with him. Anybody else does that? :) After I got home I was catching up on some of my blogs, and found out from Wendy about the Un-Canceled Project. This project is 4-weeks of running challenges, aiming at taking back our lives and finding the positive motivation. You can do as many virtual races as you like each week— from 5K, 10K, Half Marathon, Marathon, and Ultra (31+ miles), and they are free! I need a challenge right now, so I signed up for it!
So, here we go. We are in the middle of another week. I am making an intentional effort to be present and positive. I am not depressed or anything, but I find that if I don’t focus on the good, the days just seem non-existent. Just… blah. Which is a shame because we are alive and, as far as we know, healthy. So there is no excuse to have a blah day. I am going to make it count by whatever means necessary.
How are you making your days count? How do we keep showing up?
Have a blessed day, friends. Hugs!
Joining these awesome link-ups: Friday Five 2.0 / Tuesday Topics/ Weekly Run Down