Oh Shut Up!

Do you ever get tired of yourself. Fed up with the predictability of some of the voices in your head? You can almost predict when they are going to start their singsong chant of 'you can't, you're not good enough, you're not tough enough blahblahblah'.

I don't usually pay much attention but, on Saturday morning, I literally barked at that voice to shut up.

I was 3k in to my 14k training run. The first 14k of my latest half marathon training. Not the one where 14k feels 'easy' because the week before I ran 16k but the one where 14k feels hard because the week before I ran 12k. I'm building up the mileage right now, not tapering back down.

I was 3k in and I was feeling ok. Not bad. Nothing hurt. But I wasn't feeling frisky either. Just m'eh.

My brain said what it always says when I'm increasing my mileage.

If 14k feels hard, how are you ever going to run 21k? 

Oh. Shut. Up!!

ShutupShutupShutupShutupShutupShutupShutupShutupShutupShutupShutupShutup!!!

You KNOW you can do this. You complete the training every time. Your body is strong. You build up the distance. You get it done even when it's tough. You know the first few kilometres always feel m'eh and then you warm up and feel better. You know that an extra 2k is less that 15 extra minutes of running. You know all of this because you have done it 12 times before!

So Shut UP!!!

And it did.

Just like that.

The voice disappeared and, for the rest of the 11k it didn't utter so much as a peep.

For heaven's sake, that's all I had to do?

(For any of you who may be concerned, I yelled back using the same inside voice that the voice in my head used. So no drivers, cyclists or runners had any cause for alarm."