At the beginning of each year, Chris Brogan does a post in his blog where he chooses three words as theme words, things to remember and keep in mind as guidance throughout the year. These are not goals or resolutions, they are simply the answers to this question: “At the end of this year, if I look back and describe the past twelve months of my life in three words, what would I want those three words to be?” Then you can reverse-engineer your goals from that, working out exactly what you need to do to have your life this year resemble the words you chose.

I like this idea, and even though I’m a few days late, I’m jumping on the bandwagon. It took me a lot less time than I expected to come up with three words I wanted to lock down; perhaps this is because I’m quite diligent about keeping up my goal list year-round, and so I already had a pretty clear idea of where I want to head.

• Hunger. No, I don’t mean anything about weight loss or any other kind of self-punishment via food deprivation. I’m not even talking about food at all. What I mean by “hunger” is a hunger for the things I want in life. Because of my experiences, I’ve seen time and time again how the person who gets the prize is almost always the person who wanted it the most. Naturally there are exceptions here and there, but almost all of the ridiculous and even “impossible” goals I’ve seen reached were accomplished by people who got the job done simply because they were so ravenous for it that they were willing to do whatever it took, no matter what, long after everyone else had given up or lost steam. I used to be that person, but, at the risk of sounding like I’m making excuses, one loses the hunger a bit when one is on the Turkish Riviera, enjoying the beaches and the mountains and drinking tea on the balcony. Not that I regret having a few years of unadulterated recreation, mind you, but I think I’m at a point in my life where it no longer has to be an either/or situation. I think I’m capable now of mindfulness and gratitude for the present moment while chasing after my goals like someone possessed.
• Action. All the desire in the world means nothing if you’re not able to get yourself off the sofa. Clearly this word goes hand-in-hand with hunger— if you want something badly enough, action is the obvious next step, and hopefully it would happen pretty automatically if it really were hunger-driven. I think it’s important to note it separately, however, because the kind of action I’m talking about is the kind where you specifically move in the direction of your goals. Most people fill their days with all manner of activities and convince themselves of how busy they are and how much they’re getting done, but a shocking amount of what we do with our time amounts to nothing more than filler. If you don’t believe me, spend a day writing down every single thing you do, without changing your regular habits, and at the end of the day count up how many of those things were actions that made a direct impact on your major life goals. I’m not judging; I’m certainly guilty of “keeping busy” too. But now I’m ready to stop being so busy and start taking real action instead.
• Adventure. A couple of months ago I read a blog post somewhere that said, “start saying yes to adventure. Whether it’s a trip to the corner market or a trip to Outer Mongolia, stop hesitating long enough to talk yourself out of it and just start saying yes when you want to.” Now, you might think I’m the last person who needs this advice, and to a great extent it’s true that I’ve lived my life according to whim— after all, this is why I’m talking to you from the Mediterranean coast and not from a stuffy cubicle in Western Suburbia. But I think it’s almost because of the huge amount of travel and adventure I’ve had that I’ve allowed thoughts of “I deserve to do nothing for a while” to creep in. Routine is such an easy rut to get into, and its gravity field is ridiculously strong. There will always be a million reasons to say no to things you want to do, but why do that when it’s just as easy to say yes? For me, It’s time to embrace the power of yes again.

So there they are, my three words for 2011. If you have three of your own you’d like to share, I’d love to hear them.

Real progress: I moved up to Week Two this week, and… drum roll… I’m doing real, live boy pushups, finally. In fact, I did 21 of them today. The gain in strength seems to be accelerating. Very pleased with that.

I’m still having one problem that I’ve been experiencing since the beginning, though— when I do pushups, I do them very slowly because if I speed up, it feels like my collarbone is going to snap in two. I read something online that said this is not unheard of, and tucking the chin into the chest can help because it rounds out the top of the spine and takes some pressure off the collarbone. Indeed tucking my chin does help a lot, but now that I’m doing more pushups (and harder ones), the problem still creeps back in after the 10th or 12th pushup. I’m told it won’t ever completely go away, but that I shouldn’t be afraid because despite what it feels like, my collarbone won’t break. The internet wouldn’t lie to me, so I’m just going to believe what I’ve read. I’m the freak who has too much calcium in her diet and has never had a single broken bone or any dental work whatsoever, so I think I’m pretty strong in that department.

As always, I’m curious about your own 100 pushups saga, so please do chime in!

Click here to start reading the Hundred Pushups saga from the beginning.

We have progress. Kind of.

You’ll be bored to know that I am repeating the first week of the program yet again (this is my third time around), but to me it only makes sense that I shouldn’t move up to level 2 of doing pushups if I can’t complete level 1 yet, and in fact can’t even do a single standard pushup. As far as I’m concerned there’s no race to complete the program in a certain amount of time, and my main focus is that I want to get this right. Insert toddler walking/running metaphor here.

I’ve learned a couple of tricks that have helped, and as well I do believe I’m getting stronger. On Shaunte’s advice I have started doing my pushups on the floor, and indeed it has taken out a lot of the complications I was experiencing before. Now it’s just me against gravity, which is much simpler in terms of position and form, although obviously more difficult in terms of strength required. Today I attempted a boy pushup out of curiosity, and I discovered that I can sort-of kind-of do one if I stick my ass in the air (which is bad form, but I’m simply not quite strong enough to flatten out into chataranga yet). I was able to do a second pushup by using my hips as a hinge, which again is cheating, but I just wanted to see what was possible right now and what wasn’t.

It occurred to me that doing them the hinge way is pretty much the lifting equivalent of a girl pushup, so my second experiment was to try pushups on my knees. To my surprise, not only was I able to do them, I did 15 of them! This is a huge deal— I’ve never been able to do anything approximating a girl pushup before, much less multiple times. I’m definitely getting stronger.

So, to summarise:

• Boy pushups: I can do 1 if I cheat, and 2 if I really cheat on the second one;
• Girl pushups: I can do 15 without stopping, whereas for the past 35 years I could never do any at all, not even with the help of a personal trainer.

I’m thinking that by the end of the week, I’ll be doing real boy pushups, and maybe then I can move on to the second week of the program. I’m not going to cry if I have to repeat the first week a fourth time, though— I’m nothing if not patient.

How’s everyone else doing? Anyone getting close to three digits yet?

Click here to read the next part of the Hundred Pushups saga.

Click here to start reading the Hundred Pushups saga from the beginning.

Okay, I’m frustrated. I’m really not sure how to proceed. I’ve completed the first week, but I don’t feel like it’s going the right way. I’m doing wall pushups at the moment, because that’s the only way I can lift any weight with my upper body, and even those are seriously kicking my ass. Monday (the first day) I thought I was okay, but then Tuesday morning (my first rest day) I had to take a double dose of painkillers just to get out of bed. What had started out the previous evening as shoulder and chest soreness had bloomed overnight into full-body agony. Everything hurts when I move— arms, chest, back, hips, knees, ankles, wrists, everything. Oddly enough, my pecs and triceps stopped hurting yesterday, but I’m still having the overall body pain. I’m hobbling around from room to room at a snail’s pace.

Incidentally, how far is “down” with pushups? Does your nose have to touch the surface your hands are on? Because in any position, even against the wall, I can only get about half that far before I’m in real danger of sudden collapse, and then I come back up (see also: broken nose, avoidance of). So I think I’m doing half-pushups (maybe, not sure), and even those are killing me. But if I go down all the way (which involves collapsing because my arms can’t hold me past a certain point), then I can’t lift up again. Not even an inch. I’m not sure how to handle that.

Obviously I’m not ready to move on to week two, but I’m dreading doing week one again. I’m trying to convince myself that I won’t just be repeating this first week a million times, not being able to sleep because of the pain.

The thing I don’t get is, I’m not out of shape. I run and do yoga regularly. I take the stairs. I’m the most flexible person I know. So why is this particular exercise causing me so many problems?

Advice and words of encouragement are welcome. My next pushups day is Monday, so I have two days to come up with a strategy.

Click here to read the next part of the Hundred Pushups saga.

Click here to start reading the Hundred Pushups saga from the beginning.

No, I’m not going to do one of these updates everyday, don’t worry. I might do an end of the week roundup, or maybe just mention when I’m moving up a training level (which would be every week for a normal human, but might be every other or every third week for me). The reason I’m posting today is because I wanted to share “before” photos. This challenge is not particularly about looking better, so I’m not going to go nuts with hundreds of daily photos from a million different angles, as some have suggested, and as some others taking the challenge have done. I’m just going to post these two photos today (you can click on each of them for larger versions if you’re really bored), and there will be two corresponding ones at the end. Theoretically, if there are any visible changes in muscle tone they should be mostly in my chest, but this is not that kind of blog and I’m not going to post those kinds of photos. Sorry, boob lovers!

I’ve actually already done my pushups for today (against the wall), and it was sufficiently difficult. I definitely feel it in my arms and shoulders. I’ll let you know at the end of the week if I’m going to repeat the training week, or move up to the second week.

Did anyone else start today?

Click here to read the next part of the Hundred Pushups saga.

Click here to start reading the Hundred Pushups saga from the beginning.

A couple of months ago I noticed a few people starting the Hundred Pushups Challenge. I kind of half wanted to try it, but kept putting it off for two reasons: one, as the meme of it gained momentum, I dreaded getting all bandwagony about it; two, well… to be honest, I didn’t really believe I could do it.

You see, I have no upper body strength. Now, I know you’re thinking that that’s normal for women. But you don’t get it— I have no upper body strength whatsoever. If I need to move something, even something relatively light like the coffee table, I have to sit down on the floor and push it with my feet. If I tried to push it using my arms or shoulders, it wouldn’t go anywhere, and I’d be sore for a week.

On the other hand, I have freakishly strong legs. When I used to work out at a gym, the men would comment that after I used the leg press, they’d have to take the weight stack down to about half of what I was lifting. I have the strongest legs of anyone I know, male or female. But on the bench press machine, I struggle to press 10kg. Even 5kg gives me trouble if I try to do more than one set of ten reps. I have no idea why my two halves are so mismatched, but it has always been this way for as long as I can remember, even as a small child.

Pushups— no way. I can’t even do a single one, not even close. Not even a girl one. I can’t imagine a situation where I could lift even half my own weight using my arms and chest. I made the mistake one time of trying to do an inclined pushup (which I was told would be easier), and nearly smashed my nose into a million pieces when my arms collapsed on the first rep and I crashed face-first into the apparatus.

I have to admit that this hundred pushups thing is especially intriguing for me. The claim is that anyone can do it if they just follow the six-week program, which only requires a few minutes, three days a week. I don’t particularly expect that I’d be able to do a hundred pushups within six weeks, since I can’t even get close to doing a single one now, but I do wonder just how far I’d get, and if maybe I could hit the goal within twelve or eighteen weeks (they encourage you to repeat training weeks as many times as you need to if you feel you’re not ready to move up to the next level).

So I’ve decided to try this after all, mostly because I’m curious. I am the ultimate test of whether or not this program really can work for everyone. I’ve never met anyone with a weaker upper body than mine, and that’s including young children. If you have a pre-school daughter in your home, my guess is she can lift more than I can. I’m serious.

You’re supposed to begin this program by doing an initial test to determine your starting upper body fitness level. Boy, that didn’t take long. Number of completed pushups: zero. And you should have seen the strain— veins popping out on my neck, the whole nine yards. It’s not like I didn’t give it my very best shot. Girl (knee) pushups: same result. So it appears that for the first week at least, I’ll be doing the wall pushups as recommended. Hopefully I’ll be able to graduate to regular pushups at some point, though it’s difficult at the moment to imagine how that’s going to happen.

I’m very much approaching this as a science experiment rather than as a fitness goal. I’m curious to see if I can do it, of course, but I’m not going to beat myself up if it doesn’t happen in six weeks or even twelve. Quite a few of my blogger friends have taken this challenge before me, and unanimously the results have been amazing. I’ve also seen a couple of personal friends go from being able to do only a few pushups to being able to do fifty or more. If I could do even five standard pushups after six weeks, I would call that a phenomenal success.

So we’ll see. I’m starting tomorrow (Monday, 25 August— it’s a M-W-F sort of deal), so if anyone wants to start with me, please do comment or send me an e-mail and we’ll be pushup buddies. I’ll make an effort to track progress here, whether there is any progress or not. Feel free to gloat as you sail on past me… I have no illusions about my abilities. I’d be happy to make you feel better about your own measly progress.

Emirhan says that if I do the hundred, he’ll buy me the t-shirt. Hmm. Link

Click here to read the next part of the Hundred Pushups saga.

I’ll cut to the chase: I’m going away for a couple of weeks. It’s not a holiday, as such— it’s a Vipassana retreat up near Istanbul. I’m leaving tonight, (i.e. Wednesday night, the 10th), and I’ll be back on the 24th.

Those of you who are familiar with Vipassana retreats don’t need to read any further… if you’re not familiar with Vipassana but don’t care all that much, suffice it to say I’ll be engaging in some hardcore silent insight meditation for ten days, with some travel time on either side. That’s about it.

The semi-long version of the story is that about a year ago I started dabbling in Vipassana via the online teachings of Gil Fronsdal [wiki]. I had wanted to try meditation for a long time but didn’t really know where to start, so like most of my peer group I turned to the internet for help. I stumbled upon Zencast, and it pretty much snowballed from there. I’ve never had any formal training, just my little bits of practicing at home and whatever I’ve read online.

Vipassana is an ancient form of meditation that focuses on insight and seeing things how they really are, without changing or judging them. It’s a practice that dates more than two millennia back to the Buddha himself, whose teachings have been passed down through generations all the way to a handful of Vipassana masters who still teach today. I like the idea of being an objective observer of things I should normally feel very subjective about (for example my breath and the state of my body), so I found the concepts of Vipassana very attractive. It has to be said, though, I’m not the most diligent meditator— consistency is key with these things, and I’ve hardly been sitting every day. I started to think maybe a meditation group or a teacher might be the next step.

Then a month or so ago I made the observation that not only had I never seen a Turkish Buddhist, I’d never even met any Turkish people who meditated (meditation being a secular practice in itself open to those of any religion or no religion). I started looking online for Turkish meditation groups, and since Vipassana is a particular interest of mine, I narrowed my search to see where in the world Vipassana retreats or sittings are held. At first it didn’t look like there was much going on in this part of the world, but then I found the web site of S.N. Goenka, a Vipassana master whose ten-day intensive retreat courses are held, quote, “all over the world.” Yeah, sure. All over the world except for Turkey, I thought. But lo and behold, when I looked at the list of course locations, there was a name and a contact address for Turkey along with a note stating that the next retreat would be held in October 2007. I fired off an e-mail asking for more information and waited a couple of days for a response.

Meanwhile, diligent researcher that I am, I started digging around for blogs and forums where I could read the opinions of those who had already taken a ten-day Goenka Vipassana course. I soon discovered that there is a huge amount of controversy surrounding this method of Vipassana and indeed Vipassana in general— I won’t bore you with the details, because you know how to Google stuff if you’re curious, but in a nutshell there appear to be a lot of people who fiercely defend this method as a tool for exorcising one’s personal demons, and a lot of other people who say it ruined their lives. One thing all seem to agree on, however, is that the retreat changed them forever.

So of course then I was even more curious, and by the time the organisers of the retreat wrote me back I’d pretty much already decided I wanted to go. I filled out my application and it was accepted the same day. I leave on a bus tonight to travel across the country (which reminds me, Turkish bus travel is something else I wanted to talk about— perhaps when I return from this trip, yeah?), arrive at the site tomorrow afternoon, and then I’ll be locked up with my fellow students for ten days, waking before dawn and meditating for ten hours everyday, eating only before noon and not communicating with anyone in any form (not even eye contact or hand gestures). It’s bound to be quite an experience.

Part of the strict code of conduct for the retreat states that we’re not allowed to have journals or writing materials, which means I’m just going to have to remember everything and write it down later. Since I’ve once again signed up for NaNoWriMo this year (what is it with me and controversial methods?), I figure that at the very least this retreat will be a good opportunity to dig up some internal conflict, create an empty female protagonist, and on the first of November I can just shove all the demons into her and turn her loose in novelworld.

In any case, I’ll be back here two weeks from today— I’ve not got any guest writers or anything lined up, so the blog is going on retreat, also. You’ll have to live without the bazaar for a couple of weeks, but when I come back I’ll have lots of stories and photos, and after that I’ve got lots of changes planned. We’re coming up on the one-year anniversary of melissamaples.com, and I want to take it into the second year revitalised and fresh. I hope you’ll join me.

I wish you all a great couple of weeks, and I’ll see you when I get back.

I’ve got to pull myself together. First there was the dropping-the-iron-on-my-foot incident a couple of weeks ago, which put me out of commission for quite a few days, and then I went to Cyprus and came back with the mother of all head-and-chest colds, which had me bed-ridden for nearly a week. Meanwhile I watch all the conditioning I’ve built up start slipping away as I lie in bed and eat comfort food and gain weight. It’s depressing, to put it mildly. Tomorrow is the 31-week mark and I feel like I’m starting over from the beginning. Even as I’m typing this I’m having to stop every few minutes to have a coughing fit. Last night I got so light-headed I had to sit down halfway on my journey between the living room and the bedroom. I feel weak, and I feel pathetic. Factor in the sluggishness and self-pity brought on by the hot weather, and what we have here is a pretty sad disaster. Boo-hoo, poor me. I’m the only person in the world who’s ever been sick.

So this week I have to try to piece things back together. I need to eat right and drink the right things. I’m a singer and voice teacher; I know how to repair a throat problem. I need to take it easy on the exercise for a few more days, but I do need at least to start exercising again. If I see dust gathering on my running shoes it’ll be enough to send me to the crazy house, I know it. So I need to start doing something or this whole thing really will come to a screeching halt.

It’s a mixed blessing that Emirhan’s doing so well with his own training. On the one hand, it’s frightening and sometimes frustrating that he’s pulling away from me so quickly. He’s a natural athlete— being a bodybuilder, training comes easily to him, and his runs, even the long ones, are fairly effortless. Where I come home panting and exhausted after thirty minutes, he returns victorious and energetic after an hour. He’s going from strength to strength, and it worries me that I’m not doing the same. Aside from my own fears, I don’t want to drag him down with my negativity.

On the other hand, I couldn’t ask for a more supportive and inspirational partner. He’s forever telling me how great I’m doing (even when I’m not) and he’s more than happy to run with me if I want the company and encouragement, or stay away if I feel suffocated by his presence (I’m quite the pro-active introvert). Being no stranger to physical training, he knows exactly what to say and when to say it, and his natural enthusiasm is infectious. He says we’re a team and that the job of team members is to support each other. I’m so lucky to have someone around me who is competing in the same event as I am and can understand what I’m going through. He keeps reminding me that this obscene summer heat won’t last forever, and the cooler weather should be hitting just as I’m getting back up to my best standard again. At that point my training should run a bit more smoothly. That’s exactly what I needed to hear.

One thing I really need to happen is for Öger (the company sponsoring the marathon) to open the marathon registration. The web site promises that registration and full marathon information will be available from the middle of July. But of course this is Turkey and we run on Turkish time; “middle of July” means anytime between now and the new year. It’s now nearly August and there’s no sign of any changes on the site. I’ve heard from scores of runners that actually signing up and paying the registration money makes a big difference in the feeling of committment— this is no longer just a vague thing that’s approaching; once you’ve registered it’s a real event with a real date and real place at the starting line with your name on it. I want to feel locked in to that committment. I want to know that this is something I’ve promised myself to with more than just words.

I know that a couple of weeks of derailment isn’t the end of the world, but it’s easy to let illness spiral into self-pity, especially when two or three things hit in quick succession. So now with a new training week starting tomorrow, I’m going to spend this evening appealing to my friends, my fellow runners, and my readers— I need your encouragement. I need to hear that you, too, got knocked down for a week or two and managed to get back up and get everything back in order. I want to hear that your cousin ran a marathon after having recovered from brain cancer and that I need to shut the hell up and get on with it. I’m going to pull myself out of this regardless, that’s just how I am, but if I can have an external boost… even better.

Now I’m going to spend a few minutes making a training plan for the week and getting my running clothes ready for tomorrow morning. Even if I’m only well enough to manage a walk when I wake up, that’s okay, at least it’s something. For once I’m going to earn all those wonderful things Emirhan says about what a capable athlete I am. I’m not going to let myself or the team down. Being ill is okay, it’s not my fault, but now that I’m recovering I’m not going to let this setback or my self-pity stop me from getting the job done. This time next week I’ll report back with ferocious triumph the likes of which you’ve never seen.

Fin.

Earlier this month I announced I was going to run a marathon next March, and then after having spent the following week or so floundering around buying things and trying to get my head around the enormity of the task, I realised I had no focus except the vague cloud of “marathon,” and as we all know if you focus on nothing, you’re sure to hit it (see also: several past marathon attempts, all with no clear plan and all ending in failure). So this past weekend I decided to get organised in order to gain confidence about the huge mountain of work ahead of me.

I always feel better when I get things written down— usually the situation is not as dire as I think it is once I see it all laid out in front of me. So in hopes of quelling my rumbling anxiety, on Saturday I started to make a training calendar (I used good ol’ iCal, since I wasn’t using my iCal for anything else). I started out by taking a notebook (a real one, you know, paper and all that) and writing down everything that I would work into a training schedule if the world were perfect and I had endless resources. I decided I wanted to do running (obviously), some other cardio activity (swimming seems obvious), some core stability training on the Swiss ball, yoga, and something involving meditation or some other kind of mental concentration discipline. As it turned out, when I mapped all these things out, they didn’t take up as much of a day as I expected. I can get them all done before lunch time and relax in the afternoon. I also made a space on my calendar to keep track of my weight and my daily food intake; if I’m going to launch myself around Antalya for 26 miles, I need to do myself the favour of getting the rest of this extra weight off. The exercise will help, certainly, but I need to stop shoveling goodies in my mouth like it’s Christmas.

The race is on a Sunday, so I designated Saturday as my full rest day, and when the time comes that long runs are a possibility, Sunday will be the day for those. There will also be a break from running on Wednesdays, which is when I’ll fit in the swimming or whatever I decide on. Swiss ball work and yoga (I subscribe to Yoga Today, which is free and unbelievably great) will happen every day of the week, as will meditation. Everything starts at low levels and builds gradually over time. When I added it up on Saturday, I learned that there were 260 days between then and the race. I was panicked about that before, but now that I have a written plan it appears to be plenty of time.

So I went out for my first “real” training run yesterday morning (Sunday, day 259 if you will). I set a goal for the week: by Friday, the last training run of the week, I want to be running 15 minutes non-stop. I’m not a beginning runner, but I am quite a bit out of practice, so I thought this was a reasonable goal.

Three minutes into my Sunday run I didn’t think my goal was so reasonable anymore. I started my run at 7:00 in the morning, and as soon as I hit the road I realised I’d started much too late. Already the heat and the sun were almost more than I could take, and I was feeling like a big fat radiator bouncing up and down the street. I finished the session without dying, but only just, and to be honest I walked most of it. Still, there’s only one first day of training, and it can only get better from there. I went home and did the rest of my training work and felt at least somewhat accomplished, but during the run I was really unhappy, and I didn’t feel much better about it afterwards.

Last night I thought a lot about how I could improve my approach. As a habit I listen to a lot of Gil Fronsdal’s teachings via Zencast. You don’t have to be a Buddhist (I’m not) to get into Vipassana meditation and the practical daily applications Zencast offers, and I recommend this podcast to anyone who wants to shake up their brain and explore something new. Gil talks a lot about “hanging out” with feelings as a coping device (a technique which is often used by mental health professionals to treat phobias). He uses the example of boredom and restlessness during meditation, and he advises that the best way to hang out with that is to label it in your head (“boredom,” “restlessness,”) and if you just keep hanging out and acknowledging those feelings by labeling them and accepting them rather than judging or acting on them, eventually the bell rings (to signify the end of the meditation period), and then you’re free to go and it turns out it didn’t kill you to sit there after all. I wondered if I could apply this technique to my unhappiness and frustration with running.

I knew that one thing I was going to have to do, aside from getting up earlier, was get rid of my timer. As I mentioned before, I already ditched my heart rate monitor months ago because it was making me obsessed with numbers instead of running. But on Sunday I noticed my watch was doing the same thing— I couldn’t stop myself from looking at it every three seconds to see if it was time to quit yet. That’s no fun, and it keeps my brain from being open to things like awareness of the feelings in my body and perhaps, god forbid, enjoying the scenery. But of course I still need a way to time my runs, so I came up with an idea: I made an iTunes playlist approximately 15 minutes long (this week I’m enjoying songs from the new Chemical Brothers album), and popped it onto the iPod Shuffle. I added a track of silence at the end to make sure I would know when to stop running. So now all I have to do is start the iPod when I start my run, and simply run until everything goes quiet. No watch to obsess over, and great music to run to. I decided to give it a try this morning and combine it with the “hanging out” and labeling techniques.

I went out at 4:50 this morning (day 258). The weather was much, much more tolerable. I walked for a minute or so, and then fired up the iPod as I started to run. Within a couple of minutes I was really unhappy and desperately wanted to slow to a walk again. I labeled those feelings in my head. “Unhappy.” “Tired.” “Want to quit.” “Fed up.” “Hate running.” “Unhappy.”

I know you all know the phenomenon by which repeating a word over and over causes the word to start mutating in your head, until it sounds alien and eventually loses all meaning. Well, today I discovered the same thing happens with labeling feelings. You really get into your labels, and the very act of labeling causes those labeled feelings to distort and then dissipate. So after a few minutes, “unhappy” and “tired” became “blank” and “I’m not sure what this one is. Neutral, I guess.” I labeled those feelings and hung out with them, too. Then some outside stuff I was experiencing started creeping into my labeling: “mountain.” “Brick wall.” “White cat.” “Chemical Brothers.” I felt myself smiling. “Smiling.” The fact that I was busy labeling things meant that I had no room in my head to tell myself all those stories about how I could just quit and go back to bed, or about how I’m too out of shape to run a marathon, or about how it’s ridiculous to put myself through this when I’m clearly not cut out for it. We all know the stories we make up in our heads, every excuse in the book about why we shouldn’t succeed at doing something difficult.

In fact, I was so busy labeling things that when the music came to a sudden halt I nearly tripped and fell over my own feet .

And that was it. On the second day of training I ran 15 minutes non-stop, accidentally. I wasn’t supposed to do that until Friday. And at the end of the run I was settled and happy and completely devoid of all the negative thoughts I’ve usually filled myself with by that point. My experiment worked. I’m going to try it again tomorrow.

I think I’ve really hit on something here— as I was walking home I thought to myself that if it weren’t for my current poor state of physical fitness, I might have continued to run like that for several hours, just noticing things and labeling them and not judging or criticising or feeling sorry for myself. Later in the day when I really didn’t want to do my yoga class, I labeled my way through that, as well, and honestly I think I connected with the poses today in a way I never have before. I’ve never paid this much attention in my life.

So I’m feeling good about this training stuff.

Incidentally, the new shoes are working out well so far— they’re a lot less like new shoes than most new shoes are. I do have a strange blister in the arch of my right foot, but I’m pretty sure that’s due to my flip-flops and not the runners. I’ll tape the blister for a couple of days and see what happens.

257 days to go. “Confident.”

The main point of our shopping trip yesterday was that I needed new running shoes. My Asics are not all that old, but there were a few issues. One, they’re men’s shoes (I have wide feet, and many times men’s shoes fit me better), and so I always thought they were ugly, even uglier than running shoes usually are… there must be some law that says running shoes can’t be sexy, because every running shoe in history has been ugly. Two, Emirhan’s always had his eye on my Asics— he wears them about as often as I do, and since his feet are bigger than mine, the shoes are now loose and slip a lot. His excuse when borrowing my shoes was that he was planning on buying me a new pair anyway, so yesterday I finally gave him my Asics for good and held him to his promise of getting me some new runners.

I never thought in a million years I’d own a pair of running shoes by Adidas. Even Asics was a bit pop-culturey for me; normally I go for Brooks or New Balance or something geeky like that. But yesterday when I saw these A3 GigaRides in the Adidas store, I couldn’t believe how cool they looked. I told myself that silver running shoes this sweet could not possibly be suitable for actual training. Everyone knows that quality running shoes are required to be ugly. But I decided to try the A3s on and see what they felt like.

I was shocked— they felt great. They’re a better fit than the Asics and they offer more support. They were comfortable and performed well in my (albeit weak) test run through the store. They were ridiculously expensive, but that’s just a fact of life with running shoes, and Emirhan’s opinion was that if I liked them so much and they were going to help me get through my training, then they kind of pay for themselves in usefulness. So we bought them. I’m giggling with Product Love. I can’t wait to start training in earnest.

And speaking of training… I had a long talk with an old friend of mine, a guy who has known me since I was a teenager and is familiar with how I work best and where my strong and weak points are. Coincidentally, he is also an Iron Man triathlete and accomplished distance runner, so he knows a thing or two about running as well. I contacted him because I had done a lot of research on the internet about marathon training and preparation and had discovered that marathons and pregnancy have a lot in common— everyone on the internet has a different opinion about the best way to proceed, they’re all willing to fight like pit bulls about it, and in the end I just end up thinking that none of these people are me, none of them can possibly know the unique requirements of my specific person, and perhaps I’m better off making my own decisions, regardless how ill-advised. After all, that’s how I ended up in Turkey, and Europe before that— by going against what everyone thought was right for me and sticking to my gut instincts. In fact, that’s how I’ve made most of the major decisions of my life. I don’t think I’ve ever chosen the popular option. So I asked my friend what his take on the training issue was.

To my surprise, he agreed with me. He said I should spend less time listening to the advice of others and more time trusting what my body tells me. I’m not new to running, so it’s not like I need someone to hold my hand through every little step of training. He said that if more runners would spend less time making up arbitrary blanket “rules” of training and more time focusing on their individual needs (which by definition will never match anyone else’s on the planet), there would be a lot more people capable of finishing super events like the Iron Man. Problem is, people try to make middle-of-the-road guidelines that fit everyone, and the result is exactly that: middle-of-the-road. Mediocre all around. No one standing out in any way.

So that decided it for me. I’m going to do what I always do with everything: take what I’ve learned from various sources and combine bits of this and pieces of that and make my own special regime. It may not suit anyone else, but it’s going to suit me. It will incorporate all the running I need and all the rest I require. It will also include supplementary training like yoga and meditation (I’m a big believer that endurance starts from a the metaphysical rather than the physical). It will be tightly organised around a modified diet and lifestyle. When March rolls around, I am going to be a marathoning machine from top to bottom, focused and prepared. I may not be the fastest runner on the race day, but that’s okay. I’m there to win in a different way.

So there you have it. I’ve got all the gear I need, and I have a plan— now I just need to get to work.

I’m going to bed early tonight and setting the alarm for the crack of dawn. My new shoes need breaking in.