The Wall

The Wall is the new uninvited guest in my life.  He shows up every single time I train.  He'll be here for a while and I guess I have to get used to it.  I've worked through a few ways to deal with him in my week and a half of training:


1) Destruct:  Charge forward and push yourself harder than ever and you'll get past him. This seemed like the bad ass way to deal with him and was my original go-to strategy.  The trouble with this approach is The Wall has earthworm-like properties.  You tear him apart and think you're finished with him for good, but all you've done is made two walls.  So a 1/2 mile later he will show up again with reinforcements. He's a jerk. 


2) Acquiesce: Admit defeat, revert to walking.  Today we ran 2 miles to determine our pacing groups with the option to run a third mile. The Wall showed up with 20 mile an hour winds, a 'real feel' of 12 degrees and (ahem) a wine headache. At mile 2 I called "uncle" and opted out of the third.  Shortly after my bad girl feelings hit me harder than The Wall, so I walked all the way home from the East 90's to the West 60's. The wind, temperature and dull headache taunting me the whole way. If I am to progress, this will not be an option.  The good news is, we only have a few more winter Saturday runs and I now know not to drink excessively the night before a long run (admittedly, I knew this already). I'm the jerk in this scenario. 


3) Ignore:  Pretend that he doesn't exist. One day when running wasn't in my life, I asked my friend Alex "How exactly do you train for a marathon?"  He answered "A big part of the training is learning to not stop when your body tells you to." It sounded crazy to me at the time...aren't we supposed to listen to our bodies?  Turns out no...that's just The Wall talking. To really push yourself forward, you ignore The Wall and keep going. If you ignore him long enough he'll go away.  I've effectively ignored him twice, this I know is best path. 


"There is no spoon."