Pick A Fight

It’s early and still dark.

I’m running 1 mile as fast as I can.  The only sounds I hear are my labored breathing and the steady rhythm of my asics gels flying across the pavement.

I fight the urge to slow down.

I check my stopwatch. I AM slowing down. So I pick up the pace. I’m about to pick a fight with myself. And I already know who the winner will be. There are 2 voices in this fight.

One of the voices seductively whispers :

“Walk, take a breather, no one will know.”

The other voice fights back with: “You can do this, Scott, you’ve been training for this, keep going.”

“You need to save your energy for your 2-year-old – you’re going to need it today.”

“I’m going to win this one.”

And so it goes…

This is a typical battle that I engage in when I run.  I don’t think of myself as a runner. Running, for me, can be uncomfortable and foreign. I’m more comfortable squatting, benching and curling.

But, you have to feel comfortable feeling uncomfortable if you’re going to progress physically and mentally. Of course, that’s a tough price to pay these days in an immediate gratification society filled with progress-killing excuses. But deep down, we all know.

Don’t we?

“When the fight begins within himself, a man’s worth something.”
– Robert Browning, 1855

“How much can you know about yourself if you’ve never been in a fight?” ~Fight Club movie

(A social media post by me from 2010 when I was operating my fitness boot camp – Scott )