Goals

Today I attempted to max my first Army Physical fitness test since I was hospitalized a few years ago. I have been training ever since I was injured and I have been able to run multiple endurance races but improving speed has been nearly impossible. But for the past few weeks I have seen incredible improvement during interval training. For the last few years I have hyperventilated and generally had serious difficulty breathing when my heart rate increased. I was tested for allergies, asthma, anemia and my heart and everything was fine. The only thing that was left was panic attacks. I was having a lot of panic attacks for other reasons so it was the only logical conclusion. Keep in mind that this is an incredibly pithy explanation of over two years of frustration.
I digress…

Coming back to the point; I have finally been able to improve speed over the last two weeks and I have been extremely motivated. I knew that I wanted to take my PT test early (to free me up for a Thanksgiving Turkey Trot) and that it would be best after an Ultra Sound at Physical therapy I selected today. All of my interval splits were solid; I was running consistently under five second on my 800 splits and about seven seconds under on my 400 splits. But I had not taken into account the sit-ups that directly preceded the two mile run and I was incredibly stiff on the track today. It was much more difficult today than in my training runs. But I was not going to give up. I knew that I was not in my best form but I kept running as hard as I could. When I came in for my sixth and seventh laps I knew I was behind on my splits and it seemed impossible. I wanted to hang it up and just take it easy and get a gentleman’s ninety because this run was sucking something fierce. But I could not. I knew that I needed to run a split that was about four seconds under my first one and my pace had degenerated about twenty seconds a lap. I was tired and have some difficulty breathing. I was miserable, but I went faster and faster all the way to the finish.  I improved my first split indeed, but only by two seconds. I missed maxing by two seconds.

I was upset but only for a few seconds. I was quickly happy.  First it is silly to be upset when you have met 99% of your goal but that was only a small reason. Primarily I was happy because of how much the run sucked. I have been running hard for my whole life and it almost always sucks when you are racing. This time it sucked and I could still breathe. It was still hard to breathe but that is normal. It sucked but I could keep going fast. Running long duration races helped me connect with the part of myself that could easily endure misery and this was comforting when I was depressed. To be able to still perform well again is all the better. Life is hard and that’s all I want. I don’t want all my problems to o away that would be lame. I just want to remain conscious when it sucks. I couldn’t do that a month ago. Today sucked but I can’t wait until it sucks more.