Continuing on my theme of only writing about my positive experiences, because I need to right now.
Back in November (4 months ago) I was feeling really pleased with myself. In the 12 weeks since radiotherapy ended I‘d improved my fitness from struggling with a flight of stairs to running a continuous 5km. I was excited about my progress, excited that my running was almost back to pre-cancer levels and excited that the all consuming extreme fatigue from radiotherapy was steadily lifting.
I wanted to keep this tracjectory moving moving forward and to not just reach previous fitness levels but to surpass them. So I signed up for a March half marathon, thinking training would keep me motivated over the winter months. A half marathon is 21km and the furthest I had ever run at that point was 10km!
Training started well but the trajectory of recovery slowed. I discovered that my remaining fatigue was almost certainly caused by the Herceptin injection which were due to continue until after race day. I discovered that winter viruses made me sleep all day. I discovered that managing fatigue and running was a tricky balance.
There were times when I stopped running for a couple of weeks to recover from a cold or a minor injury. I fell well behind my own training schedule. I compared my running constantly with where I felt it “should be” instead of celebrating where it was.
I started to make a conscious effort to be kinder to myself, to notice and focus only on the progress. I would consciously say to myself, “wow, you just ran 10km and 6 month ago you couldn’t climb a flight of stairs some days”. It helped, but I would still find myself worrying about where I “should” be in my training. The half marathon became an emotional burden rather than a motivating goal.
Then this week’s run happened. It was my last long run before the race and it was hard. I had my tracker in my back pocket so I didn’t check my progress until I got home, estimating the distance covered using only my knowledge of the route. When I stopped I discovered, I’d ran further than I thought. I’d ran faster than I’d thought. I felt proud!
I‘m holding on to that proud feeling. It feels good to experience this emotion spontaineously, rather than trying to conjure it up with self affirming pep talks. It feels good to share my achievements without internally qualifying then with “I know it’s not very good” or “I know I could have done better”. Yesterday I ran 17km non stop and I’m SO PROUD of myself.
