Climb Right Over those Fears

Joy here...After blaming last week's no run week on every excuse in the book, including SAD (not unheard of at this time of the year, trust me), I've just decided to chalk that up to an off-week and not beat myself up over it.  During the summer's training for the first ever half marathon, I sort of realized that my rhythm was kind of a 3 weeks "on" followed by 1 week "off," which basically meant that I was able to pull of most (sometimes even all) of my planned workouts for my "on" weeks, and I generally just had easy runs for my "off" week.  Maybe last week was just my "off" week a bit early.  Maybe in the winter I'l be on a 2 week "on" and 1 week "off" schedule!  Who knows?

What I do know is that I tried rock climbing for the very first time in my entire life last night.  To be clear, I've never even been to a climbing gym; I've never watched rock climbing on TV; and I really didn't know the first thing about it.  But I figured that in order to get through this winter without succumbing to those SAD blues and without feeling like our life has turned into some sort of movie in constant replay where we do the same thing day in, day out, we decided to try something new.  And climbing it is.

The Man scaling the wall!

I should also mention that The Man is terribly afraid of heights.  It's one of those phobias that he wishes he didn't have, but wishing something would be so, doesn't always make it so.  Instead, he's figured he just needs to get out there and conquer his fears, and to his credit, he was up there scaling walls, despite cold sweats and shaking fingers!

In fact, I think every now and then it's a good thing for us to get out there and do something that scares us.  Back when I was 19 I got a tattoo; my tattoo symbolizes three things for me:  fear, fire, and water.  I like to think of these three things as being both ultimately destructive AND creative.  I mean, we can't live without fire, but too much of it will burn us to cinders.  Similarly, we die if we're without water for 48 hours, but if we have too much, we'll be swept away in a flood.  On the same vein, without fear we'd do stupid things like run into oncoming traffic, but if we learn to work through our fears, to conquer them, then we can truly transcend the mundane and become something just a little more, a little better, than we thought we could be.

So hats off to my husband for facing some of his fears last night by clinging to the wall like Spiderman, and I will try to continue to face my own fears - my fears of failure - as I begin to learn that this running journey of mine (and of Nomi's and all our other friends - like AK and Lulu - running their own races) is about so much more than just putting one foot in front of the other again and again.

Over and out,
Joy