Contradiction

I am not really sure how to start this one or end it.  Maybe it has no real beginning or end.  Maybe it just is.

I started running with Rusty Snow when he had a group through SBAA to train for the Santa Barbara Half Marathon back in 2005.  I can't recall the price, but I know it was cheap because I signed up so I would show up.  We didn't and we don't have a lot of extra cash flow, so you know it was cheap. Wow... I so did NOT know what I was getting myself into.  Looking back, I know it was life changing.

Yes, I had run in high school and after my second year was on varsity and even made captain my junior year!   I was motivated because I loved to run.  I never wore a watch then.  I never really understood spilts or whatever.  I just ran.  I never made it hurt too much.  I never pushed just a little further, but I wasn't a slacker either.  I wanted to beat the other girl.  Sometimes I did.  So, for me, running was my getaway.  Running was my passion outside of all of my other "stuff".  Running just made me, me.  I recall Pam, my coach, saying to me at one point my senior year that she knew I would be someone who would run forever.  Yup.  That is me.  Funny how I didn't really get that then, but I so do now.  I never reached my potential as a runner in high school much like I don't as an adult.   Hmmm....  Deep thought.

When it was time to go to college, I was actually recruited by Humbolt State to run cross-country.  I am not sure what my coach told them, but maybe she said that with the right maturity (which I had none of), and hard work (which I am really good at)... maybe I could be a good runner.  In any case, they recruited and I said, " no." Humbolt was too far away from home for a 5'3'' 95 pound girl who just wanted to run, be a teacher, and get married.  Maybe I should have gone and taken that risk.  I will never know...

So, off to Cal Poly SLO I went.  I did go talk to the coach  at Poly who told me I could come run with them on their easy days.  I don't think I ever did.  Oh well.  I still ran.  I got taller.  I gained some weight.  I became a teacher and eventually a wife and mother.  But, the athelete in me was still there.  I just don't know that I knew it.

When I first started training with Rusty seven years or so ago, I was probably 10 pounds heavier than I am now.  I wasn't in terrible shape but I would get so nervous before a workout and then feel so spent after that my husband was on the verge of letting me go.  Well... not really, but let's just say it was not good for the marriage.  I wanted to run the paces and mileage that Rusty threw out.  I could.... but I couldn't.  There was just too much else.  I had a full time teaching job.  I had a husband.  I had a house that I (at the time) kept obsessively clean. I also had a daughter in kindergarten and a son in second grade.  I didn't have a running buddy or even a headlamp to run in the dark of morning with but I did have a treadmill which made to possible to transform myself from a 30 mile a week jogger to a 35-45 mile a week runner.   I also went down to a size 6 and lost about 5 pounds. After the half marathon that fall I had to let the coaching go.  I just didn't have it in me to juggle it.  So, I was a lone runner for a  year or so.  But... I kept on running!

Fast forward just a few years to find myself in and out of SBRR.    I am a part of it and not a part of it.  I want to commit to it and make it my everything, but I can't and I won't because it isn't.  I love the people.  I have so much respect and put so much trust in Mike and Rusty.  I want the coaches to know I am working when I come to work but in the same breath I fear that what they ask me to do will break me and I will be injured.  Or, I pretend that I don't care what they think.  Hmmm... Maybe it is the Gemini in me?

The whole time I was not running in 2011 and instead getting my core strong I thought to myself, "I am going to show up on that track on Tuesday or at that tempo on Saturday and Mike or Rusty will notice how strong I have gotten and how balanced I am."  Like Elda said at the SBRR deal on Sunday, I care what they think.  I want to please.  I so want to be a part of it but I am good at pretending that I am fine when I am not.

I so want to start showing up again but I am so scared of that track!  I  can't do the schedules.  I am saving the money to get the legs worked on when they stop working right.... I gotta do what I gotta do with what I have.   It is ok if it goes unnoticed but it also isn't.  I will just follow the crowd.  I will just run what I am going to run.  I want to be pushed but I don't.  I want to be noticed but I don't.  See if I am being coached then I have the curse of letting the coach down.  So it is better this way.  I just want to run.  No one has to notice when I am running well, but it is nice when they do.

I am just a contradiction.