Heading out on my training run, I wanted to break that 16:00 minute/mile pace that has been with me since I returned to the roads in March. I had it in my mind's eye last Saturday but it didn't happen. I'd been watching Billy Mills YouTube video as I retrain myself as a runner after last December's injury. I've been keeping a healing journal and writing affirmations.
I wanted to write down in my training journal a 5K run with a sub 16:00 minute/mile pace but to be honest, I was afraid to write it down in case I missed my mark. Now I know that you have to be willing to commit 100% to goals. I am still clearing out the messages from doctors and therapists who discouraged me from running or pushing myself. I guess too there was a part of me that didn't want to "fail" if I wrote down the goal and fell short today and that's okay. The important thing is that although I couldn't commit to writing down the goal, I made a shift in my thoughts before I went on my run.
I reminded myself that I am a runner. I imagined Forrest Gump and Wilma Rudolph and Billy Mills. I am fearless when it comes to setting and achieving goals when I move out of the way and allow the transformation to happen.
I thought about the work of Dr. Joe Dispenza, and "You Are the Placebo" and rather than focusing on the how's or why's or what's of breaking the 16:00 min/mile pace and beginning to focus on a PR for my race on July 3rd, I decided to set the goal and just let it happen.
I reminded myself of how I felt when I ran in 2010 breaking PR after PR by setting my mind and intention squarely on the outcome and visualizing how I wanted the moments to be. I ran and flowed from the inside out.
I could tell when my mind was straying from working coherently with my body and I reeled it right back using the imagery that Joe uses in his You Are the Placebo book about taming a stallion to focus during meditation.
I felt a side stitch and nauseous and I reminded myself to run from my soul. I kept coming back to running from my soul and allowing the beautiful elegant runner within me to emerge.
I did not look at my time but had every confidence that I was running a sub 16:00 minute/mile pace. I believed it with every fiber of my being and asked the Universe to work with me to just make it happen.
Now just as a side note - I have also been strength training and cross training in the pool to become the runner I am today but my beliefs about my running and setting goals are just as crucial as the physical training. Joe Dispenza talks about the importance of coherence with the mind body. During my run today I kept coming back to feeling everything working together releasing doubts and placing all of my physical, mental and spiritual energies into the outcome I wanted for today's training run.
And so it happened! My fastest pace since 9/20/14 and 1 minute and 46 seconds within striking range of my 46:53 PR at the Bill Rodgers 5K in August. ***46:52*** is the time I want to see on the clock when we cross the finish line at the Finish at the 50 on July 3rd. I believe in setting goals not limits and I know how amazing it feels to open this body up and just run as well and as fast as I possibly can.
I'm back feeling strong and confident as a runner once more surrounded by a great support crew in my husband and my running family. And when doubts or fears rear their little head, I can now outrun them. I'm retraining myself mind, body and Spirit for speed and endurance. Success breeds success. Seeing an average pace of 15:33 with splits of 15:44, 15:14 and 15:47 (the last mile had a hill!) makes me smile from ear to ear.
Life is indeed a marathon and I am so blessed on the roads and off.
Cheers! To Life! Love yourself well!
I chronicle the first 7 years of my healing journey after being diagnosed with post polio syndrome, a progressive neuromuscular disease as a survivor of childhood paralytic polio and 9 years of childhood domestic violence in Coming Home:A Memoir of Healing, Hope and Possibility.
I am working on my new book, Feel the Heal: An Anthology of Poems which brings together my best poems of the last 8 years and will include my latest poems as I continue to feel the heal and move forward in my life.
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