Tuesday 24 August 2010

Running Against the Wind

I couldn't tell you exactly when it happened, but sometime in the past couple of months I stopped weighing myself completely.

Bear with me – this is, unfortunately, not going to be one of those posts where I tell you I've freed myself from scale tyranny.

My breakup with the scale started slowly: First I was just going to have a few days' alone time. I'd been weighing myself every day – too much – and I got more than a little disgusted after it crept up after a weekend when I ran 2 10ks in a 16-hour period (and had no extra food). I decided I was eating and exercising well, and sod it, I didn't need any scale to confirm it. (Ha.)

Then there was a binge or maybe two. Maybe it was denial. Maybe it was choosing not to beat myself up with a number. Maybe it was just that I put the scale somewhere very inconvenient and couldn't be bothered.

My jeans have been awfully tight and last week I put on a pencil skirt that was a squeeze.

This morning I hopped on the scale: I'm up about 10 pounds from the top of my happy range.

I am not happy about that.

(Lest it seem like I'm hiding something: If you need number porn, btw, I'm nearly 11 stone, whereas pre-Dorset I was around 10 stone 3, and despite my best efforts afterward, I couldn't get below 10 stone 6.)

Where has this weight come from? A series of binges that (mostly) have been documented here. They've occurred lately with disturbing frequency and, worse, very alarming intensity. (The most recent binge, on Tuesday, actually made me so ill I spent nearly all of Wednesday in bed – and I have been known to work through anything.) My clothes are tight and that makes me panic and I eat more and that makes me panic and I might get fat again and that makes me panic and people saw me eat like a crazy person (huge fistfuls of Twiglets and crisps) and that makes me panic and I might have to choose whether to move to New York and that makes me panic and I might be alone for the rest of my life and that makes me panic and oh, hell, I need a break from all of it and some food will do nicely.

I know you know this. I know this, too. But somehow knowing it does not translate to not doing it. Not yet, anyway.

So the goal, again, is to get to 30 days without a binge. I'd like to do something drastic and lose a couple of pounds quickly – tight waistbands to me are like a daylong distress signal, and at least as distracting – but I know that that will do me no favors. If my goal is just not to binge I'm not guaranteed to lose any weight that way, but I can be reasonably sure of not putting more on. For now, that will have to do.

Six days clean.

***

Sunday – after three nights of horrible sleep (generalized job and life anxiety? Too much caffeine? Really, I have no idea) -- I did something crazy.

I have been dialling it in at the gym – turning up, yes, and for an hour five times a week, but for the past couple of months mostly without the usual energy and mix-ins (sprints, boxing, burpees, whatever...) I do a lot on the crosstrainer and not much else. I haven't run since my army assignment finished at the end of July, and haven't run more than six miles.

So what, exactly, I was doing running a half marathon Sunday is anybody's guess. The course wasn't far (away), I'd signed up for it months ago, and I figured I might as well go and at least get an hour's run in and I could always quit.

It was torture. London has some beautiful parks, but this particular one was not one of them. The course was six loops of the same circuit – my least favourite kind of run (I prefer out and back because it's hard to turn around otherwise). Less than a mile in I couldn't even imagine finishing one circuit.

I made a deal with myself: I would try to get through 4 loops – which would constitute an extra-long workout -- and then I could walk the rest. I focused on just getting to the next water station (about a mile apart), and on making a point of saying thank you to every race volunteer I made eye contact with, especially the ones picking up plastic cups the runners all drop on the ground after grabbing a few sips.

I felt like I had lead legs in cement shoes. I felt literally weighed down by my own extra weight.

Then somehow, sometime around mile 8 (somewhere in loop 4 – there were no mile markers) I picked up speed. Everything snapped into place. I stopped feeling like I was fighting for each step and felt more like I was flying.

It was glorious. (For at least a mile, anyway.)

In the fifth loop a guy bumped into me. "Sorry," he said. We exchanged the isn't-this-grim smile. "Just one and a bit more to go," he said.

"Even if we walked it we'd still finish," I said.

"But we're not going to, are we?" he said. No, I thought. We are not. I picked up speed again.

This race did not have chip timing, but I finished just under 2 hours 3 minutes – faster than last year's half marathon time.

Unbelievable. It's almost enough to make me want to enter another one... and oh yeah, maybe actually train for it.

4 comments:

  1. That's awesome! Very inspirational.

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  2. I didn't even finish reading this post (yet), but felt I needed to comment right away. I am one of those people who will probably have to weigh myself every day. For some people, it is a burden -- for me, it is what keeps me on track... and when I STOP doing that, I go totally off the rails, then go into the guilt / denial phase, and end up gaining 30 lbs when I could have put a stop to it at 5-10 lbs.

    I have dreaded the scale so much for the past month but finally got myslef back into the habit of facing it everyday. And yep, for me, that does the trick...

    Just my quick 2 cents and now I'll go read the rest of what you wrote. ;-)

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  3. Ugh. Scale fear. Haven't been on it in months. Haven't got the courage right now. Maybe in a few weeks of clean eating/working out. Cowardly of me, but there it is. Congrats to you tho, both for climbing on and powering through your race. It really is inspirational.

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  4. Ishmael, that's exactly why I have to weigh myself every day. If I stop for more than 2 days... I am terrified to get back on...

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