2 miles easy. Ish. Running is hard when you're out of shape, lol. I just ran at a pace I felt I could maintain, which ended up being 8:41 pace. Not too shabby. It wasn't my legs that were tired actually, it was my lungs that hurt.
I had a conversation with Noah last night about running/working out and it kind of shifted my mindset about getting back into running. He was saying that if I approach running with the idea that I'll push myself until I can get to comfortable distance and run that every day without too much effort and enjoy it for a month or so, until I get bored then increase for the next month until it feels comfortable and enjoy it for another month or until I get bored of the new distance and increase again, it will be a lot more enjoyable. The problem with running in high school and college so competitively is that I started to resent it and lost the enjoyment. So I think that is the approach I'm going to take. I'm going to run 2 miles a day until I feel comfortable with it, enjoy it for a while, then when I'm bored of running 2 miles and feel like I could do more and want to do more, then I will increase my mileage. Slowly but surely, but with no pressure. And if I want to run more one day great, but I'm not going to force myself to do more than I feel like. Hopefully that will help me enjoy running again.
Also, as an update. I broke up with TJ/Tim/Timothy (he goes by all 3). I got tired of feeling like I was a second thought. I was tired of feeling like he didn't really care to get to know me, he was too busy with other things and that's okay, but it's not what I wanted for a relationship. I wanted a deeper connection and it honestly seemed like he was emotionally unavailable. I got on bumble pretty soon after because I knew what I wanted, changed my profile to reflect what I wanted and was pretty honest about that in my bio, and started swiping. I think online dating is a lot different for girls than it is for guys, because it seems like every guy I talk to only gets like 2-3 matches in a few weeks and (not to be arrogant or anything, I honestly think it's just the sheer number of guys on dating apps and not as many girls) I get a hella lot of matches within a few days and struggled to keep up with the conversations. But then on Saturday I matched with Noah, and we spontaneously decided to meet up, and we just hit it off. Honestly, the best time I've ever had, and not because the things we've done have been adventurous or creative, like literally we just went to beans and brews and grabbed coffee and talked on Saturday, but because talking and being with him is so much fun. The last time I felt that instant connection and like we could talk for hours was with Sawyer, the guy I almost married in 2020. I'm not saying this is going to go anywhere with Noah, I honestly don't know, I'm just going with the flow. But we've both talked about how we're wanting to be serious about dating now, it's not just for fun. It is fun, but like, we both want to eventually get in a committed relationship, if things continued going well. I've enjoyed talking to Noah so much that I stopped talking to other guys and I'm not pursuing anyone else, I'm going to see how things go with him. Which is different from how I felt with TJ, I was still wanting to go on dates with other guys until we had the exclusivity talk. I don't care to do that and I'm not overthinking everything because I like Noah so much and enjoy my time with him. I know it's been less than a week since we met, but I guess what I'm saying is there is a real spark there and it's so exciting. Such a nice change from how sad and insecure I was about how things were going with TJ. I think ending things with him was the right thing to do, even if I still am a bit sad about it. Every now and then I am sad and I miss him, but also, if I hadn't done that I never would've met Noah, and I'm fucking excited to see where things go with him. We're goinng to try west coast swing dancing tonight, neither of us have done it but both have been interested in trying it, so we will see how that goes.
I'm going to try running as much as I can but I'm not going to put up the expectation for me to run every day, because I think that's unrealistic. I'm gonna try for 3 days a week until I get more into it.
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