I tried to sign up for that Biggest Looser style competition today. It did not go well. I showed up at the place within the designated time frame to sign up (between 7 and 10 am.) I was not sure I was in the right place when I walked in. It was just a big room with some fitness equipment, and a bunch of very fit people doing cross fit in different small groups. There were a couple people sitting on a couch near the entrance. After standing around looking lost for a second I approached one of them and asked them if this was the right place. They had no idea, but said the trainer running it should be around somewhere, just go wait on the other couch. So I sat there. And I sat there. And I sat there. The people on the other couch got up and joined a few other people that had wandered in and started their own class. Eventually another class ended and the instructor saw me sitting there, and asked who I was waiting for. She called the trainer, no answer, texted her, no answer. Said she was sorry, and left.
I had now been sitting there for about half an hour, feeling completely insecure and stupid. I was the proverbial fat kid being stood up by the popular girls.
I left.
I had a complete meltdown by the time I got home. It had taken me so much to just get myself there, to put myself out there and walk in that door. Every second I sat there I felt a little bit worse, a little bit uglier, a little bit more worthless. Every time I saw someone looking at me, It was like I could read on their face what they were thinking. "What is she doing here? Look at her! So fat and ugly and stupid." I'm sure none of them were actually thinking that. I'm sure they're perfectly lovely people. But that's what my head said. That's what I felt.
When I got home, I couldn't explain to my husband why I was so upset, why I was curled up with my face in my hands sobbing.
So we went for a run. We packed our daughter and the jogging stroller into the car, and my husband strapped his brand new, untested, knee brace on, and we drove to the canal path near our house. It was freezing and windy, and while we were setting the stroller up and strapping our daughter in I thought about calling it and heading home. But we went.
My husband is very tall and has very long legs. His natural walking pace is almost as fast as my normal running pace. He runs at a really fast clip. To slow him down, he pushes the Jogging stroller when we run together, but usually he still burns me out really quickly. This was his first run in a while, his first run with the knee brace, and only his second run since his knee injury. We wern't planning on going very far.
I kept up with him, feeling comfortable at the pace he was setting. I had some nasty heartburn for a while (I hadn't eaten yet.) But by the time we hit the one mile point, I was still feeling alright. My husband dropped back to a walk at that point, and I kept going for a while, about another half mile, before turning around and taking a walk break. When we hit the bridge which marks the one mile point again, we started jogging again for a while, about a quarter mile, before I was unable to maintain his pace. He said he was shot at that point anyways, so he started walking, and I slowed my jogging pace way down. I took inventory and realized I was just about out of gas, but decided I could make it to the 1/2 mile point. I sprinted the last bit of it, and then dropped back to a walk, and headed back to meet up with my husband. The walk back to the car was nice, although I had to ask him to slow down at one point, he really does walk fast.
The running part (including my walk breaks) was about 2.42 miles. Not a far run, but it was fast (for me) and doing a run in the cold, blustery weather made me feel much more hard core about it.
It helped my state of mind a lot to do that run, but I'm still having a hard time shaking off the anxiety from this morning.
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