{"id":35,"date":"2020-03-01T08:23:48","date_gmt":"2020-03-01T08:23:48","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/nursedynamite.com\/?p=35"},"modified":"2020-03-01T08:41:39","modified_gmt":"2020-03-01T08:41:39","slug":"walk-first-then-run","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/nursedynamite.com\/index.php\/2020\/03\/01\/walk-first-then-run\/","title":{"rendered":"Walk First, Then Run"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

As a teenager in Civil Air Patrol I hated running.   I wasn\u2019t good at it, I easily ran out of\nbreath, and I was surrounded by people breaking 5 and 4 minute miles.   Me?  I broke my ankles twice, and sprained each\nankle 6 or 7 times.  OK, ok\u2026one fracture may\nhave occurred from tripping over a garbage can lid hidden in the shadows while\nrunning away after stealing someone\u2019s Christmas lights.  It still involved running, and the instant karma\nfor stealing was to ride the disabled kid\u2019s bus from Queens to my Brooklyn high\nschool every day through the winter.    My\nmindset about running held me back from trying for the highest level rank as a\nCAP cadet, and it caused me to leave a highly competitive summer activity called\nPJOC early as well.   Would you believe I\nstill have a sore shame spot about this 25 years later?   Anyone\nelse still ruminate on teenage failures? \n<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Yet as an adult I became curious about running.   In 2015 a friend recommended a program\ncalled couch to 5K and I completed it the first time through.  I then completed my first 5K run with Wall\nStreet as a backdrop.  My time was 36:54\nand I placed 1,702nd<\/sup> out of 2,258 women.   I didn\u2019t\ncome in last!   In all fairness, it was a\nwalk\/run 5K, and because there was a slowdown out the gate these results don\u2019t\naccurately reflect my run time (not that I\u2019m competitive).    The most important lesson I learned that\nhelped me keep running was that I COULD RUN SLOW.   Nobody told me this when I was a\nteenager.   In fact when I ran slow as an\nadult I learned how to pay more attention to my body and adjust my posture and\ngait to reduce pain.  I could enjoy the\nscenery, and I could enjoy finding a rhythm in my breath.  When I wanted to push more and my body said\nno, I (mostly) respected it.   My knees\nand I came to an agreement about how often we could run (every 3 days) and I\nlearned to not worry about keeping up with the track star friend that was\nlapping me during our late night french-fry fueled runs on the track off the\nFDR \u2013 the same track some of my teenage humiliation mileage was built up.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

There\u2019s a reason programs like C25K are successful.   When early on the adrenaline of feeling like\nwe\u2019ve made some progress kicks in and we are AMPED up to run longer or push\nourselves harder, the program forces us to keep walking intermittently to build\nphysical and mental conditioning so we can run more successfully and be less\nlikely to injure ourselves.   <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Slow and steady wins the race, they say?   What is the race?  The race here for most of us is against our own\nminds, not any competitors.  If you have never<\/em> heard about our brain buddy dopamine<\/em> then you obviously haven\u2019t\nheard the news that you are possibly addicted to substances, sugar, or your\nsmartphone.  You might instead be\ntickling your dopamine through competitive sports, consensual safe sex with\nmultiple partners, masturbation marathons, coffee, dancing, serial\nentrepreneurship, or doing compulsive scientific research.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I\u2019m an indisputable dopamine junky.  I always want to run even when I haven\u2019t walked\nso I quickly burn bright and can easily burn out.  Yet I\u2019m resilient.  I bounce back, and more often than not these\ndays I do eventually cross the finish line, giving that teenage quitter in me\nthe middle finger.  Needless to say the\nheyday of my running career began and ended in 2015, but the skills I learned\nin C25K translate outside of running.   Go slow, alternate running and walking, don\u2019t go\ntoo fast too soon nor run for too long until you\u2019ve built strength, resilience.  Whether running or walking I can slow down,\nmanage my breath, listen to my intuition, and adjust my body to reduce and\nprevent pain.  Oh yeah, and enjoy the\nadventure.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The theme for this reflection was illuminated by a series of\nevents.   It started with receiving a\ncoaching call this morning during which we cultivated some seeds of ideas for\nmy group coaching course but it culminated with uninstalling Facebook from my\nphone.   Have you ever done that?   I suddenly get curious about what other apps\nI have on my phone, and I also somehow accidentally opened the C25K app I didn\u2019t\neven know I had.  The app was a perfect\nmetaphor for my struggles with launching my coaching business.   <\/p>\n\n\n\n

My coach\u2019s brain was moving fast and I tried to keep up because\nI had been preparing for our call which got rescheduled twice this week.  Run. <\/em>Yet,\nI\u2019ve been super sick the last week, and I\u2019m moving and thinking in slow motion\nso I spoke the intentional need to slow down in the call.  Walk.<\/em>\nWe checked in found common threads again and could pick up the pace. Run.<\/em> After the call I sat for a while\nand putzed around, eventually deciding to actually \u201csit\u201d and set a meditation\ntimer for 10 minutes.  Walk.<\/em>  This led to some ideas surfacing which\nafterwards I listed out in the bujo.  Felt\nlike a run.<\/em>  I felt pretty decent and hopeful about these\nsmall steps today.    Good job, self.    Triumphant cool-down walk. <\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Yet, several hours later I decided to try to build on that\nearlier progress instead of leaving well enough alone.   I engaged in another common step I use to\ntry to accelerate progress \u2013 gather more information on process.   So, I looked for youtube videos on group\ncoaching.  It repeated concepts I\u2019ve\nheard before in a marketing crash course I took several months back such as\nconnect deeply with your why.  Walk.<\/em> Scope out what the competition is\ndoing and what elements their programs might be missing.  Run. Heck, I didn\u2019t even feel\ninsecure or jealous while doing this! <\/em> Create a sign-up landing page.  Easy!<\/em>  Run\nfaster!<\/em>  Create free content to offer\nvalue to draw people to you who might ultimately want to take your course.    Sprint\u2026Gasp\u2026.Screeeeeeeech.   Overwhelm.<\/em>\n Stop.\nRight. There.  Panting.<\/em>   Imposter\nsyndrome kicked in and the fragile roots of confidence that had grown earlier\nin the day had upended.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I stopped the video and tucked those delicate roots back\ninto the soil of my psyche.  To walk<\/em> would be to honor my body\u2019s insight\nthat the needed resources, wisdom, and guidance will appear when I use my own creative\nprocesses to continue to flesh out my own unique ideas, and that the soil of\nthe universe, of my support systems, would nourish and support the success beneath\nmy feet.  Through walking<\/em>, my confidence, content, muscles, lungs, skin, mind, heart,\nand spirit will grow stronger.  Only then,\nrun<\/em>. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Congratulations!\u00a0 You are amazing.\u00a0 <\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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As a teenager in Civil Air Patrol I hated running.   I wasn\u2019t good at it, I easily ran out of breath, and I was surrounded by people breaking 5 and 4 minute miles.   Me?  I broke my ankles twice, and sprained each ankle 6 or 7 times.  OK, ok\u2026one fracture may have occurred from tripping … <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[24,26,27],"tags":[3,11,22,14,13,9,6,12,20,25,8,15,16,4,17,10,7,23,18,5,19,21],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nursedynamite.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nursedynamite.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nursedynamite.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nursedynamite.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nursedynamite.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=35"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/nursedynamite.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":42,"href":"https:\/\/nursedynamite.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35\/revisions\/42"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nursedynamite.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=35"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nursedynamite.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=35"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nursedynamite.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=35"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}