Denial Denial Denial

BIKE indoors 45 mins guessing 10 miles
BIKE COMMUTE
SWIM.....?

I just now briefly tried to find the quote about how you can't change something you don't measure. Didn't find what I was looking for, so I'm either majorly mis-remembering it or making it up or just off base entirely.

But my point is that by NOT measuring, you kinda live in your own little bubble of denial. For the past few years, I didn't measure heart rate in training and lived telling myself that "HR doesn't matter". For those same years, I didn't pay attention to strength and running form, telling myself that I'm running far and fast so I must be doing something right.

The past year since I quit running I held to habits and quit measuring thinking that things were gonna change no matter what, it's all out of my control until I'm training again. OK that's true, but now I'm training again and I gotta face the numbers. New PR's, new goals. No more living in the past. No more thinking what it was then is what it will be next. Nope.

The past few weeks I've been noticing that I fall into narratives about "being broken" and being a victim and being defined as "injured". I've recognized the pattern and have been working to swap in better substitutes.

But there's daily reminders that I face. My body doesn't respond like it used to, I'm out of my cardio vascular expectations set in 2016. This is 2018 and 2017 was a year 'off'. I can't expect that my legs and body and HR will respond like before. My head doesn't approach challenges like it used to, now it has the hurdle of these negative narratives to jump before I can accept things. My body doesn't look like it used to, as evidenced too by the fact that it doesn't respond like it used to, and my expectations of being able to physically do things like lift heavy or jump a curb or run up a flight of steps are all out of whack with the lack of strength.

Oh fuck these silly thoughts. Re-write the above to stop the denial.

My body doesn't respond like it used to, yet. It took time to get to 10 miles then 50 miles then 100 miles. But as I keep plugging away at these little goals the fitness will come in time. My head has had some hard times but it must be doing something right or I wouldn't be recognizing the need to change and I wouldn't be here setting goals. Your head fill find its confidence as this goes. And your body doesn't have the strength it used to for many reasons, among those the fact that you don't do strength training! Good thing that I got in 10 mins this morning of upper body, it means I've already started!

I still have concerns that I'm somehow not healthy. I keep thinking I need to get my thryoid checked, for example. Stop blaming the thyroid. 

This was precipitated by the campus WedMD event with the useless numbers that came back. I went in thinking I'm healthy and walk out thinking I'm not. The total cholesterol was 359, but the number was meaningless because the total HDL was too high for the range of the machine (>100). That means the rest of the cholesterol tests were unable to be calculated -- ratios, triglycerides, and LDL. Four years ago the numbers were all great. So I've been living in denial about that, thinking I'm great and just assuming. This wasn't a numerical result really, but it was a result in that I've learned that I have to quit assuming.

Can't assume I'm running all good health numbers. Can't assume I'll be running a 10K 'just because' I used to. Can't assume that I know what I'm doing with PT and strength and training.

But I can get tested and have the info. I can run a 10K because I'm slowing chipping away at that goal and building up. And I can learn more strength and PT info to ward off more injuries and delays.

And the next question.....can I swim?!? WTF?