The weather was warmer this weekend, and I was so excited for it because I had plans to run and bike outside and enjoy the sunshine. I love being outside, and winters in the Midwest are not my favorite. I miss the SoCal weather the most around this time of year.
It was over 50 degrees Saturday afternoon, and I hit “Start” on my Garmin and took off down the trail by my house, ready for the seven-mile run I’d planned for.
A short time into the run, my hat blew off and landed in the mud. As I chased after it, I stepped into a puddle and got one of my shoes completely soaked. I kept running but was pretty miserable carrying a muddy hat and sloshing around in a dirty soaked shoe. About two miles in, I decided to call it and turned around. Despite the muddy hat and shoe, I didn’t feel great to begin with.
On Sunday, I’d planned to ride my bike. A little over a mile into the ride, I called it and turned around. The trail was still slushy and icy, and my back tire fishtailed numerous times in the short distance. A fall was probably imminent if I continued.
A weekend of training wasted, I thought at first. To top it off, I had dinner at Culvers with my love which was an atypical nutritional choice for me. There was a time and place when I would have thought this weekend meant my training had been derailed and my fitness level entirely lost.
I’m training for a half Ironman triathlon this summer. It’s not my first one. I’ve done two others years ago. I’ve been on an endurance triathlon training hiatus for about five years now. There’s a reason for that. Obviously, my life has undergone some drastic and dramatic changes in the past five years. In some ways, I was forced to focus on other things, so I didn’t sign up for any races of that length or level of commitment.
The other reason is simple: I was scared.
I wasn’t scared of the distance. I wasn’t scared of the actual event. I was afraid of what endurance training can do to me, and I didn’t want to fall into old, bad habits.
I can be very “dependent” on exercise. In general, exercise is an amazing thing. It’s an important part of a healthy lifestyle. It increases longevity, decreases stress, and promotes heart health (among other benefits).
I’ve used all of those exercise perks as justification for overdoing it (as if too much of a good thing still makes it a good thing). If I’m being honest, I don’t know how to train for an endurance event like a half Ironman without overdoing it. I’ve simply never done it. I’ve never gone into a race of that distance feeling strong and ready to do well. I’ve always been injured in some way (usually my hips or shoulders), or just burned out from overtraining. I haven’t even touched on the nutritional aspect of my dysfunctional training.
Perhaps I have an addictive personality. I’ve been told that I could have “worse” addictions than exercise, so I should be grateful. People have just blatantly rolled their eyes at me when I’ve talked about struggling with body image and having a long history of disordered eating and compulsive exercising. Their dismissive attitudes seemed to say, “You really think YOUR issues are serious? You’re sooooooooo not overweight. People have real issues out there.”
Believe me, I’ve used any excuse to avoid admitting I had a problem. I would tell people my body was used to that amount of exercise. I’m an endurance athlete after all. I would tell people I needed a long run or bike ride to think and sort things out in life. While those reasons might be somewhat true, I was also over-exercising and undereating because I had way bigger underlying issues I was in denial about.
The life of someone with an eating disorder is one of deception, isolation, and loneliness. One cannot maintain these habits with a normal social calendar. It’s easy to hide these issues for a while. Oftentimes, the most “unhealthy” individuals in this regard are easily disguised as extra healthy people with an extra healthy lifestyle that doesn’t include going out to eat with friends often or indulging from time to time. Deep down, though, I was unhealthy in more ways than the physical. I avoided social eating, and when I did eat out, I’d purge or exercise (again) to “deal with it.” Hence, living so deceptively mandates isolation which leads to loneliness.
You can’t maintain that kind of lifestyle forever and be happy. I know this from experience.
I had a problem that went much deeper than exercise addiction and the fear of gaining weight. The emotional turmoil that dominated my life had to be dealt with. I used exercise as a way to avoid dealing with the turmoil and chaos in my life. Exercise was my greatest and preferred way to escape reality. It still is to some extent.
I did not get better until I got help.
Over the past five years, I’ve changed a lot. I dealt with the underlying depression that is likely more of the root cause of my other dysfunctional habits in the first place. I had to give up my quest for perfection and begin a quest to be the best imperfect version of Melanie Lentz I can be.
Since I’d spent so many years counting my too-low calories and bouncing from one restrictive “healthy” diet to the next, I had to relearn what kinds of foods I actually “liked” versus what I pretended I liked. Kale is NOT delicious, my friends, and I was lying when I said it was. Gluten-ous foods often taste great. Who am I kidding? Have you ever had a cinnamon roll? That’s God’s food. I have never had an actual diagnosed food allergy, yet us eating disorder peeps are really good at convincing ourselves that we do in order to restrict further. It’s a vicious cycle I needed to recognize in myself.
I had to start facing my demons without hiding behind a “busy” overactive lifestyle. It sucked. I’m not going to lie. But once I addressed the underlying issues like depression, I gradually stopped “needing” the exercise “escapes” from reality like I did before. It took a long time, and I still struggle from time to time. I have to be careful, and I am aware I probably will always have to be careful due to my history. An exercise “escape” isn’t necessarily a bad thing unless I take it to an extreme level.
My body and mind began changing when I started getting healthier physically and mentally. Food became a fuel rather than the enemy. And when properly fueled, my body changed, and I started performing better athletically than I ever had before. I wasn’t constantly plagued by injuries. I wasn’t feeling drained on a daily basis. I wasn’t gaining a ton of weight like I’d convinced myself I would. A meal out with friends wasn’t the undoing of my fitness. I was sleeping better and taking days off from exercise. For the first time in my adult life, I felt really good. I was actually healthy as opposed to giving the illusion of overall mental and physical health.
After a year or two of working really hard to establish a better healthy lifestyle, I started getting the itch to do another half Ironman. I started thinking about how much better I could do with the newer healthier version of me tackling such a difficult feat. I wanted to try again now that I was in a better place.
I’m about two months into training for my third Half Ironman. The race is in June. In races past, by this time, I would have been doing long runs, bikes, and swims six days per week and not fueling my body adequately. This time I’m not, and it’s difficult to “hold back” (for lack of a better way of putting it).
I’m exercising four days per week. That’s it. Have I succeeded in keeping it to four days thus far? Nope. One week I trained five days. One week it was six. But a couple slip ups didn’t get me off track. The next week I buckled down and kept the quality of my training within those four days. I worked really hard those four days and found other things to do with my time in between. I allowed myself to have fun on my days off of exercise. I’ve been feeling really good for the most part. I’m still nervous that I might not be doing enough, but I don’t care. Four days for me is just enough of a really good thing to keep me healthy. It’s less than I’ve ever done, but it’s more fulfilling to go for a five-mile run and feel strong than it is to go for three long, painful runs in a row and feel drained. Am I really getting much out of a low-quality run? The argument could be made (and is being made in the fitness communities) that, when feeling above-average fatigue, a rest day with one quality training session is far better than two low-quality training days for the sake of a training schedule.
I struggled this weekend with my new mentality. It was warmer this weekend, so I took Thursday and Friday off of exercise so I could “tear it up” all weekend in the beautiful outdoors. The reality is I was fighting a cold last week and not feeling the best. I didn’t feel great when I started my run Saturday afternoon. On Sunday, the “plan” was to go about twenty miles on the bike and see how I felt. But a slushy mess of a trail cut that plan short too.
I was so frustrated. I’d saved two workouts for the weekend, and both were garbage. I struggled inwardly a LOT, and I recognized and acknowledged it which is progress in a much bigger sense than many might realize. Logging miles for the sake of logging miles isn’t a good mentality for me. If my training plan says I need to do a seven-mile run but my body says otherwise, I need to listen to my body. Don’t get me wrong. I’m aware a Half Ironman isn’t supposed to feel easy. That’s not the point. My pain tolerance for exercise is probably on the well above-average side. The point is that I can’t get so caught up in numbers and miles and calories that I sabotage a healthy lifestyle for the sake of sticking to a rigid training plan. I’ll get those training runs and rides in, but it wasn’t meant to be this weekend because I needed to recover from a cold.
The hat that flew off my head into the mud this weekend was from a previous Half Ironman I did in 2014. The process of chasing it down meant a lot because, in the process, I paused enough to tell myself “I’m just not feeling good today” and I acted on it in a healthy, rather than destructive, way.
For the first time in my life, a long run cut short was not a setback, but a step forward in my training and lifestyle. I never thought I’d be so grateful for a gust of wind leading to a muddy hat, but in hindsight, it was a blessing in disguise.
Embracing the typing and hoping spring arrives quickly,
Mel