One of those days

Today in the shower after my run I had one of the moments of reflection where I feel so good about where I am, and how far I have come physically and mentally.

My training calendar was set for a 105 minute run today, and sitting at home with a friend chatting I was just not feeling excited about running today. Stress is creeping in from family concerns, I'm tired as just four days ago I had gone on a four hour run. But I finally dragged myself out to run, it was cold and as I didn't really feel it I just hit the flat section of the greenway.

I ended up running knocking 3 and a half minutes off my half marathon personal best time. I didn't feel like I was pushing too hard, lots left in the tank, and the first 4 km was on very tricky ice covered sections. That last bit feels a bit like a rationalization, but oh well. I'm stoked to see that with relative ease and poor preparation on the day in terms of nutrition I could pull that out. Makes me very excited about the upcoming year of race challenges I've set out for me.

It's been about 14 months since I last used drugs, and 2 months since my last drink, and 11 months since I first started trying to get to being able to stop drinking. And I feel like I'm seeing positive benefits of these decisions, in my body and mind with no regrets in these choices. I feel so much more energetic, my body looks better, and best of all people tell me I'm acting like a more positive person and I get treated as such.

I still have miles to go on my journey, but I feel like I'm no longer taking 2 steps back for every step forward and I feel like I'm actually going somewhere (not sure where exactly) but because I'm not sabotaging good efforts with horrible choices I feel like I'm progressing towards something.