It was hot on Monday.
Despite the humidity, despite my red hair and "Casper The Friendly Ghost" skintone, we started off on "Luce" anyway. My first kilometre was great: a 4:26, without pushing hard at all. I was ahead of Deluco, excited for muscle-ups, and unconcerned about the squats ahead of me. I was about to slam into a wall of hurt. Hard.
Two hundred metres into the second run, I stopped sweating. I'd been drinking all day (or had I?) The sun wasn't that bad (was it? Hard to tell.) I saw a few floating dots, and stopped to walk, watching Josh pull farther and farther ahead. I stared into the bottom of the ditch, dry-heaving with heat.
My first round was nine minutes long. The second was over nineteen. But this story is about the third.
A full bottle of Gatorade later, I was pouring sweat and praying for cloud cover. My heart rate was still too high, but no longer alarmingly so. The kilometre run seemed long, but do-able. I reached the turnaround, thankful for the downhill ride back, and gave myself permission to walk a minute.
In the stillness of July, sound carries a long way in the Industrial Park. Before I saw them, I heard them: "You wouldn't catch me out running today!" and, as I turned to look, "He's going to hurt himself!"
Raise your hand if you think I walked one. single. step. after that.
Lately, we've had hard workouts, all over the map and definitely outside the comfort zone of most. A year ago, many of us would have tried to pace ourselves: to draw the length of the workout into a timeframe with which we were more comfortable. Short workouts? Try to pace it out with water breaks. Count reps. Pull the heart rate back down into familiar territory. Keep it in the middle: that place where we're just a little uncomfortable. Scale the weight down until I can do it all nonstop.
But a 35lbs bar for "Grace" is easy. And your friends from high school….they're not your fitness friends, are they? They're great for Saturday night, but if they saw you running, in the heat, on their way to the flooring store….would they call you crazy? Would they want you back, with them, in the safe, comfortable middle?
Everyone else arounds you wants you to stay the same forever. Your boss wants you to show up every day; score 85% on your performance review; be satisfied with your Christmas bonus. Your teacher wants perfect attendance and regurgitation. Your old gym wanted you to fall into the typical circuit of malaise: sign up, miss workouts, blame yourself. Your spouse wants you to lower your standards, so that they can slip quietly into their own lessened expectations. Your kids want you to be on time for soccer, and make pizza on Tuesdays, and pay for their iPhone.
The middle is easy. Heck, it requires no effort. It WANTS you; it pulls you. Resist.
PS – my last round was 11:10.