I'm not sure I want you talking to me...

Lately I've been doing a lot of blog reading (and not as much running as I should be doing), and our good friend Vanilla has just bought himself a lovely Garmin Forerunner. I wear my own forerunner religiously, and I get VERY ANGRY when I forget to charge the battery or have some other ridiculous technical difficulty recording my run.

That being said, I think my Garmin would be more effective if the Virtual Parter came with a few pre-programmed options rather than just the typical "beep-beep-beep":



Having my watch shout insults at me would certainly be more effective in encouraging me to move faster than that annoying beep. But, I may just get angry and throw it into the woods.

The sad thing is, if my Garmin could talk, it'd be telling tales on me for sure. It'd probably talk all about the entire week that it stayed safely in its drawer, not once getting out to feel the cool breeze across its face... (I did mention this little week-long hiatus, but I was hoping no one noticed)...It'd basically have its own little stand-up act going, talking about my latest attempts at running.

Sad, but true.

Today I drove to a nice park near home to do a "2 hour run". Yeah... it ended about "1 hour in". I was very disappointed, and I feel like I've let myself down a bit. I admit that my running schedule has been a bit relaxed lately, and I think it has to do with a couple of things:

1. I need a goal. I had a goal when I was working with the team. Now my goal/plan is all up in the air... it isn't good for me.
2. SoxFan is still injured... This is a pretty poor excuse, I know, but he keeps me running on nights when it's cold and dark and I just don't feel like it.

And I don't especially like the revelations that today's run brought me to, honestly. The fact is, it wasn't ever the team, it was just me. I could do it! I could do it because I was putting in the miles, and I was improving. And it wasn't ever SoxFan. Sure it is great to have a running buddy to keep you going, but it was always just my body and my legs doing it. So when the time came for me to "leave the nest", so to speak, I feel like I've fallen flat, because I felt like I needed the team or SoxFan to be able to do it. And in reality, I don't. It's only up to me.

So this week, I'm going back to basics. I'm leaving the Shuffle at home for the hypnotic sound of steady breathing and running shoes on asphalt. I'm running my old school route, the one I've run a thousand times. Somehow I've got to shake this huge psychological barrier that has been thrown up in front of me ever since I left the team.

Best of luck to Pokey, who's out running her very first Half-Marathon tomorrow!