How far I've come...

I had some difficult moments in the past 2 weeks. They were mostly related to my difficulties in learning to swim and the discouragement that followed. I'm still not 100% comfortable in the water, and therefore, it's very difficult for me to go from point A to point B in the pool without swallowing water or having difficulties breathing. I decided to postpone my first triathlon, which was planned for the weekend after JF and I move into our new house. There's going to be so much stress involved during this period of my life that I thought it would be best to postpone to August or September.

I started having calf pain again when running and this contributed to my discouragement. I thought there was no way I could ever run 10K... But then, I gave myself a week off, and I came back to running well-rested and ran 6K for the first time ever last Sunday! :-) I was very proud of me for toughing this run, because I had pain all over and was very tired.

After many trials and errors, I think I found the magic recipe for me: 2 weeks hard training, 1 week cross-training or little running. This has worked in the past in keeping me injury-free and I'm ready to give this a try by planning those cut-out weeks.

When I posted about being discouraged about my non-existing athletic capacities, someone on Running Mania asked me to stop and look back at how far I've come. Here's how far i've come:

* 3 years ago, I weighed 25lbs more than I weigh now;
* 28 months ago, I couldn't run more than 30 seconds at a time and needed 4 minutes to recover;
* 2 years ago, I didn't have much self-confidence in both my running and my life in general;
* a year ago, I didn't have as many runners as friends;
* 6 months ago, I couldn't swim at all;
* 4 months ago, I wasn't mentally tough enough to run 10 minutes non-stop;
* 2 weeks ago, I wasn't strong enough to face some adversity in the pool.

Ian was right, I have come a long way and I should focus on that! :-)