Worry or Live?

I have so many ideas about where to take my new adventures in the world of Ness, many of which focus on this blog. I had my husband Matt do an evaluation of the blog and throw some ideas my way and he came up with a 'weekly recap' blog post. Today is the first one! The idea is to talk about what I might have encountered during the week, or what might have been a struggle, or just general thoughts. This weeks recap is about worry.

For 13 weeks I have been training for my marathon. This marathon is important to me for many reasons. It is my 'comeback' marathon after running one in 2006 and not since. It is a good bookend to my journey of the past year. It is a good starting point for the running related goals I have for the future. And it is a chance for me to prove to myself what I'm capable of. In 2006, I ran 26.2 miles in 4 hours and 56 minutes. Now I've been training on pace for at least a 3:45 time.

But all of this means that my workouts are very important to me. In 13 weeks I have not missed a single running workout. I've run through all types of cold and snow and ice. Now this week I was gearing up for my first 20 mile run of the training program. That in itself is stressful enough. 20 miles is really far! But what made this week tough is that today it was supposed to be 80 degrees with severe thunderstorms. In the morning. When I was supposed to be running.

The temperature predictions steadily climbed over the week, from a high of 50 on Monday to a high of 80 by Friday-but always with the storms. And while I knew running for almost 3 hours in the rain wouldn't be pleasant, at least it wouldn't be dangerous. But thunder and lightening? That is another story. So I spent my week worrying and stressing over what I would do if the weather was awful. Could I really bring myself to do 20 miles on the treadmill when I hate treadmills in general? And what would I wear? How soaked will I be willing to let myself get? My worry got so bad, I started to resent anyone who talked about the weather this week. Everyone started planning on BBQs and flip flops and I'm biting my nails just praying for 3 hours of calm so I can get in my run. I went and bought a new coat I hoped would keep a chunk of the rain off of me. I started thinking of back up plans if it was storming at my planned run time of 7a.m. It got so bad that I dreamt of an awful run where I wasn't prepared for ANYTHING. And guess what happened? It didn't rain. Not a drop. I've now been done with my run for 7 hours and it STILL hasn't rained.

Which brings me back to the topic of my post. Should we really spend our time worrying about things that are out of our control, or should we just live? My worry had no effect on Mother Nature what so ever. My stress helped no one. And as I told my friend Erica of Between a Rock & a Hobby "plans are overrated". Or as I've been more prone to say-"God laughs when you make plans". It was probably smart to get a rain jacket. And it was probably smart to have a back up plan as far as timing went, but it wasn't smart to let myself be consumed by worry. It is ineffective and doesn't help. So my goal this week in Pursuing Ness is to let the worry go. Just live life and let what happens happen. In other words, become a walking cliche of happy bubbles. Well, maybe not going that far, but at least let the worry go. I challenge all of you to do the same. Even if you can find one moment where you are letting the worry take over, let it go. Tell yourself that it will all work out. Or try and put it out of your mind all together. We all have the choice. Worry? Or Live?

In Pursuit,

Sarah