he next time the weather report says that it is 75 degrees outside, I will definitely be sure to look more closely at the details.
As soon as I saw that the temperature outside was reasonably cool, I quickly got dressed and headed out the door to go for a run at Umstead Park. However, what I failed to realize was that the weather report also mentioned that it would be extremely humid today….unbearably humid. I hadn’t even started my run, and already I could see the sunblock that I had shalacked onto my legs, bubbling up into tiny beads of moisture.
Whatever.
I began my run, and about five minutes into it, I considered turning around and going to the gym: the nice . air-conditioned . non-humid . gym… But I had already committed to running outside; so if this was what Mother Nature was doling out to the runners and cyclists today, then so be it.
My original plan was to run an extremely hilly 9 +/- mile loop, and in the beginning, I was hoping to finish it in around an hour and three minutes (which would have put me running at around 7 minute/mile pace. However, with the weather being as uncooperative as it was, I changed my mindset to just hoping that I could even get through the darn run.
When the Going Gets Tough; The Tough Gets Chanting?
There is one part of this particular loop that I was running today where you have to make a steady 10-minute uphill climb right smack in the middle of the run on a trail named “Cedar Ridge”. With my shirt fully soaked through with sweat and humidity only thirty minutes into the run, I found my myself focusing not on the hills before me, but rather, on my boyfriend’s favorite coffee beverage:
a large, quad, vente, skim, decaf, iced mocha…..
a large, quad, vente, skim, decaf, iced mocha…..
a large, quad, vente, skim, decaf, iced mocha…..
a large, quad, vente, skim, decaf, iced mocha…..
Now, anyone who was running with me during those ten minutes would have thought that I was nuts, but guess what? Before I knew it, I had traversed the hilly terrain and was enjoying a brief break from the hills before having to make the next climb on the main trail. Who knew that coffee could be such a lifesaver?
In the end, I wound up finishing my run two minutes slower than what I would have liked, but instead of being disappointed with myself, I couldn’t help but be proud. I knew how crappy the weather was. I also knew that as I stood there stretching beside my car steadily gulping down ice cold water, with my sweat-soaked shirt slung over the sideview mirror on my door-that the vast majority of “normal” people were still in bed. And out of those people, I knew that upon waking up, their first thought was definitely not going to be, “Let’s see how far I’ll run today..”
Ability is what you are capable of doing. Motivation determines what you do. Attitude determines how well you do it. -Lou Holtz