Today was a good day 😅 I was up at 430am to fuel & meditate. This morning, I finished my first half marathon race locally here, getting 20th in my age group, beating my goal time by 2-3 minutes. I finished pretty strong, pushing the final 3 miles, finishing with a 2 hour, 8 minutes or so time. I intentionally picked a “hilly” race with super competitive field as my first half. I still have work to do, but I realized this is only my 7th race the past year, since my return to running in April 2020 and racing in April 2021, 2 of the 7 being virtual races. I had a smart fueling strategy today and am pleased. Around 10.6 miles in, I chatted with the pacers in my pace group and they said, “go get it, girl,” haha, so passed them. I did a 16 week paid training plan by Luke Humphrey who has written the Hanson Method books, super evidence-based. :) I swear the vegan diet is the best for recovery from training. 👏🏻 I‘m in shock 😆 and excited 😆

Okay, I’m long-winded below 😆 I like the dopamine hits that I get from daily habit tracking. I’ve been using this approach since 2014, to offset my attempts to increase dopamine through social media or online time. In June 2021, I deactivated my Facebook account and Instagram is my only remaining social media. I don’t think I’m anyone special, but my streaks make me happy 😅 I noticed today was day 2,900 consecutively logging my food and exercise in the MyFitnessPal app. I hadn’t checked my other streaks for a while, but I did today and discovered I have: 637 days of guitar practice, 297 days of QiGong, and 2460 days of yoga. I never kept track of my daily meditation streak, but it’s been going since spring of 2018. I became vegan the day after Thanksgiving in 2015, so there’s that too. I also quit alcohol around March 2018 on St.Practice Day 😆 I honestly didn’t enjoy how alcohol made me feel. Even one drink would give me an instant headache 😆 and a hangover the next day. So, I quit. My hubby also doesn’t drink. My biological dad is an alcoholic and addict, so yeah, I don’t do other stuff…ever. I was drawn to our class here because I felt curious to dig deeper into Discipline. I still am a work in progress with some aspects of my habits. I became lazy in the pandemic about my journaling, poetry writing, and organization stuff. I also need to rebuild my music practice, since musicianship on guitar is super important to me. I’m slow to rebuild my guitar practice, but it’s been helpful for my brain rewiring the past 14 weeks as I follow my half marathon training plan. Oh gosh, haha, I can set a goal, follow a plan, and show up every day 🤔 Oh I had forgotten! 😆 Some of my streaks, especially yoga are part of my personal sadhana (daily spiritual practice). I began my daily yoga practice almost 3 months after my mom died in 2015. I dedicate my yoga daily to her in spirit, along with others who are grieving and I radiate love to my inner circle and the planet. It helps me to show up. With running, I do dedicate my workouts at times to certain people, especially my late athlete friend (honorary big sister) Karey who lost her battle with cancer in the pandemic. I lost 3 other friends to cancer in the pandemic. When workouts or races get hard, I think of my late friend Russ (honorary big brother) who passed away last May with colorectal cancer. He was in a men’s cancer support group and they used the hashtag #KFG (keep fucking going). I like to silence my ego whenever possible. It’s like pulling weeds 😝😆 I have had some days of feeling like I don’t want to show up, but I keep doing so. I managed to keep my daily streaks going on hard days where I did things like attend funerals or was doing 3 day long (!!!) colonoscopy preps 🤣 or had upper respiratory infections. I’m definitely not badass, but I’m stubborn I suppose 🤔 and have grit. I am woo woo a bit and ponder my ancestors and how I have it easier than them.

I made myself do my lactate threshold run in the cold 54F, constant drizzling rain ☔️ yesterday. I need more rain experience running, especially in case my half marathon in 2 weeks is rainy. I actually had a great run. Driving to the park I ran at, I saw golfers playing golf in the rain. There was no way I was gonna let them be more hardcore than me, haha! 😆 Anyway, the past 2 weeks, I’m slowly working on rebuilding my music practice. I’m applying the principles from my half marathon training to music. I sit down and sketch out a plan and follow it. It’s been super slow, but I’m hopeful. I‘m looking back at my past music practice logs to see what worked before too. I have big goals for my running and guitar stuff, with a long way to go. I was pondering this morning how in the past I’ve turned deficiencies into strengths of mine. When I was a mountain bike racer decades ago, I hated climbing. I decided to love it instead and it became my strength. With music practice, I realized I haven‘t always enjoyed all of the alone time it requires, despite being an introvert 😆 So, I’m trying to reframe the alone aspect into solitude which has a different vibe. I’m long winded 😆 but my brain is trying to rewire and yes, writing this stuff down and sharing helps me.

I used to hate Mondays 😆 but I now try to see them in a more positive light. I took some time at breakfast today to plan my day and week. I bought too small of a planner for 2022 to write down my daily schedules, but I discovered that I owned a weekly planner pad. So, I put it to use. It’s the one thing I gotta do analog...oh wait…there’s more…😅…grocery list and tube amp oh my 🤣 It also just felt good to write out my meal plan for my hubby and I for the week, along with a physical grocery list. I went to the grocery store after my chiropractic appointment today. On a side not, I’m excited 😆 to have graduated from twice weekly chiropractic appointments today. I’ll get to do once per month, yay! I had a right hip injury at the end of December 2021, which my elderly mother in law with dementia caused me. (She’s in memory care facility thankfully since then). My injury seems 99% healed up thankfully. It took a lot of work/rehab. There also was a big emotional part I had to work through 😆 Oh…one more good thing…I finally plugged in, after months of acoustic guitar 🤣 I assigned myself 10 minutes of unstructured fun with electric guitar today. It‘s literally the most fun I’ve had in ages. I just fooled around with some Stones, NY Dolls, Stooges, and yes, old 1970s country stuff 🤣😝 My hubby was working on a UFO song last night. I‘m onto him motivating me 🤣🤔 I confess that I’m stuck in the 1970s to 1980s. I also own nice gear, but I’m not that good yet. (I forgot I owned so many cool guitar pedals 😜🤣). I’m working on rebuilding my daily guitar/music practice, outlining my goals and steps. I have changed my goals/priorities a lot around music since the pandemic hit. I’ll take more structured steps tomorrow with guitar and I hope to keep outlining my steps. It‘s taking me time since I also play acoustic guitar, sing, write songs, and I play a bit of mandolin and cigar box guitar. 😅

I’m on week 13 of 16 of my half marathon training plan. I finally made myself do my intervals on an actual track 😂 instead of a local park/path. It was fun! I lived to tell too! 🤣 (6 x 800m intervals at 5K pace with 400m recovery jog in between). I realized that I was avoiding the track for some hilarious reasons: 1) “People will see me.” 2) “People will think I’m slow.” 3) “I’ll be the oldest one out there.” I live in my college town and we have a beautiful track. I was able to park downtown in my favorite structure and run my 1 mile warm up to the track and then, do my workout & run back to my car as a 1 mile cool down. I wasn’t the slowest 😆 or oldest and yes, people saw me. Eventually though, I had the track to myself. I just loved the view of the football stadium too. I felt like my old athlete self. I haven’t run on a track since 2008 when I was trying to restart my running but I had to quit due to knee stuff. (I did 4 years of high school track and cross-country = 8 varsity letters 😆 & almost did collegiate cross-country). I felt like I slayed some demons or something! I still remember my faster days though 🤔 and honestly, I think I can get most of it back, even though long distances are my thing more. On a funny side note, this winter I joined our local track club, but I haven’t gone to any of their workouts. I guess I gotta go now, right? 🤣

I was curious if anyone did the one exercise early on from John’s daily emails where you make a column A of things you have wanted to do and then, column B is listing what held you back? I’ve been slowly doing my A & B lists since last week and whoa 😆 I saw some emerging patterns already. I noticed in my B column, I wrote “overwhelm” and “fatigue” a lot. At first, I felt upset at myself, since these feel like excuses. But, I realized that yes, even though they are, I can fix them 😅 I pondered the possible solutions while on my run earlier today. I sometimes convince myself that I have permanent blocks 🤣 So, I realized (duh! ) that my overwhelm can be fixed by writing down the steps I need to take and then, assigning them to myself one by one. My fatigue bit can be fixed by doing things like unplugging from digital and scheduling in some daily rest periods. I know that I have a bad habit of scrolling after dinner. Geez, I could read a book or foam roll or just chill. I also sat down tonight to schedule my massage and acupuncture appointments for this month. Oh boy! 😆 I’m so over myself 😅

I’m a quiet introvert, but okay, I’ll step outside my comfort zone to post 😅 So far, I’ve rearranged my command center in my home office. It feels better. I still need to tackle filing some papers, one of my short-term goals. I cleared off my cork board, so I can pin up my goals. Speaking of goals, I had to take time to think about them. I‘m still writing the steps for each down. I’m a big picture person, so it’s a great exercise for me to break them down, so I can get to work. I‘m about to start week 13 of 16 of my half marathon training plan. I’m less than a month away from my race. I’m excited! Last Friday, I had a 6 mile run and made myself go out in the 45F cold, drizzling rain to run. I could’ve run on my treadmill but I need rain experience since hello, it might rain on my race day. Spring is very unpredictable in Michigan 😆 Plus, my hubby politely reminded me that I own all kinds of rain gear, even Goretex shoes 🤣 (He does almost every cycling discipline and helps coax me as a fellow athlete ). On a side note, this week was hard emotionally since it was the one year anniversary of my friend Russ’ passing from colorectal cancer. I decided to just run it all out. I didn‘t find Mother’s Day to have as big of a negative charge for me either. I miss my late mom who died in 2015 and her mom, my grandma in 2001 (Colorectal cancer…yes, I’m 50 and have had 4 colonoscopies lol). On a funny side note, my hubby and I got 5.4 miles of walking in around campus/town yesterday, so with my 12 mile run, I got epic steps in, according to Garmin 🤣 We are a vegan 🌱 household and both of us are serious athletes. We find that even though we are 50 😆 our whole food vegan way of eating helps us recover way faster from exercise. We also don’t drink alcohol or anything else. Coffee ☕️ is as hard as we do 😅 I’m long winded and will stop here…