My Journey With Health And Fitness – Finding Patience

I got up this morning and realized I was having some tummy issues. I had some breakfast and things weren’t quite settling down. I decided to wait awhile and maybe skip the run and just go for a walk. Eventually I realized this just wasn’t going to happen today, I needed to listen to my body. So no run/walk and laying off the extra fibre for today.

Yesterday I got an excellent text from the friend I am mentoring. She had invested in a Fitbit and much to her surprise she managed to run 7.5k. She said she was so close to doing a 10k she could feel it. I told her if she keeps this up we will be doing that 1/2 marathon together again next year. I also reminder her to be patient and build up slowly.

If I go back and look at my posts it was only a little over a year ago that I was in the same position. I had successfully run 5k and figured that meant coach was going to have me keep doing it as well as increasing the distance, she did not. Instead we continued to work on increasing my running intervals which I found frustrating. I so wanted to keep pushing it as I knew I was close to my goal of doing a 10k by last summer that I could taste it. I had to remind myself that I had committed to always following my coach’s instructions so I did as she said.

Really, it was only a few weeks after that when I did actually run 10k for the first time though it did feel like an eternity before that happened. After each run I had to remind myself that part of this training was to develop patience. My coach had set a goal that I would build up to a 10k without ever sustaining an injury. That patience paid off because the only ‘injury’ I had was developing a corn (I still can’t believe how painful that sucker was) and even that didn’t happen until I was well past running 10k.

If I sit back an reflect on all of this now I realize that part of improving my mental health was finding that patience. I now know that it was having that patience that helped me successfully get to the fitness level I am at today. Maybe tomorrow on my run I’ll be able to ponder how patience has made the difference and how I can apply it elsewhere.