Don't let the bastards grind you down.

Today I ran 12 miles without stopping, and it took me 2.5 hours. That is the farthest I've run to date. Yesterday I did Zumba, which made me sore for today's run, but I ran anyway. I was momentarily jazzed because my time today means I am definitely going to run a sub-3 hour half-marathon next month. Which isn't great by super-athlete runner standards, but it is fucking amazing by mine.


Tonight I checked my RSS feeds. The woman who writes the stupid running blog I read just ran her first post-baby half-marathon, and she did it in fucking 2h7m, and has the nerve to complain that she's "out of shape," that it wasn't her best, blah blah freakin' blah. Even my super-in shape husband didn't run his 12 miles today in the time that she ran her half-marathon! What is this bitch complaining about?


The thing is, running is the kind of activity where you really only compete with yourself, in the end. You compete with your previous personal records, and battle your own personal demons every time you hit the pavement. But sometimes you can't help but compare yourself to how others perform. It made me feel like shit to read this woman's post about her tragic half-marathon time, just like it made me feel like shit when a 77-year old Japanese woman beat me (by mere minutes) last year at the Stockade-a-Thon. This Japanese woman and I crossed paths at a few races last year. Surely I can outpace the shuffling grandma, I thought. And most times, I did, but that one time, at my first 15K, she outpaced me. I have since learned that where you start relative to others in a race does matter. No more starting in the very back for me. She won't outpace me again.


I know I shouldn't care about these things, but they do bother me. I aways seem eager to piss on my own achievements--why is that? It also doesn't help that someone made an off-hand comment to me yesterday about a 1-hour Zumba aerobics class being harder than running. Said by a non-runner, of course. The class was tough, but I completed it, and I don't think it's harder or easier than running, I think the two activities just aren't comparable. I wish I had shot back, 'well YOU try running 12 miles and see if you can do that, then get back to me.'  Stuff like this shouldn't bother me, it should roll right off, because I am focused, and I have been training hard, and I'm proud of how far I've come. And yet it haunts me.


Here I am, at the end of week 7 of my self-imposed half-marathon training, and instead of feeling on top of the world, I feel like utter shit tonight. Maybe I just need to have a good cry and go to bed.