At 5:30 this morning it was already uncomfortably humid. I had my short shorts on and an ELEV8 Nutrition shirt that’s two sizes too big with the sleeves cut out covering the rest of my body (sort of). I was headed to the park to get in my scheduled run for the day — 5 miles.
By 5:40 I was trotting away doing a route around the park I’ve named The Bigger-er Loop (not to be confused with The Lap, The Backward Lap, The Big Loop, The Trail Loop, The Bigger Loop or The Biggest Loop Possible). When I hit the 4-mile mark, the sun was just starting to come up. A few minutes after, my GPS watch buzzed — I had hit the 10,000 step goal for the day.
So I took a picture of my watch when I was done. 11,679 steps by 6:45 AM. I was proud of it, and rightfully so. This story will be relevant to this post very soon.
Yesterday I had a conversation with a friend that wanted to tell me about her running progress. She’s new to the sport and is still in that I may not be a “real” runner phase where things are difficult but still exciting. In this phase, you’re not sure if you’re doing well or doing it right and it’s common for you to “just”ify your distances, your times and your progress (“I just did 1 mile today” or “I’m just running 15 minute miles” etc.). Anyway, I’m very proud of her for giving it a shot — that takes guts. But then she said she felt weird talking about it because she didn’t want to be one of THOSE people…
I told her that I had written out a rant a couple of weeks ago that I intended to share as a Facebook status update (before jtfstrong.com went live) but kept it to myself thinking it wasn’t necessary or that it wasn’t the proper platform on which to share it. Today I have a platform and the story is once again relevant to current events…So today that draft will be revealed in all its glory. We’ll call this segment REAL TALK. Enjoy!
This morning my GPS watch told me I hit 10,000 steps before 8am. I thought about posting the feat on Facebook but didn’t because I understand that bragging about such things is annoying and the people who do the bragging are even worse.
But…
While this is true, there are other equally annoying habits people don’t seem to mind posting regularly:
- “I don’t have time”
- “I’m too old”
- “You don’t know my schedule”
- “It must be good to be young”
- “I can’t do it”
- “Maybe one day”
- “I wish I could, but…”
- “My husband/wife/girlfriend/boyfriend won’t exercise/eat right with me”
Any of these sound familiar?
The scientific term for these phrases is Bullshit Excuse and various languages — including American English — translate them as “I’m too lazy to put forth any effort.”
Get real.
I’m bombarded with these phrases every single day. Yet I was too afraid of posting something I was proud of for fear of being too annoying about my lifestyle? That sucks.
You don’t have to immediately go run a 5k. You don’t have to sign up at my gym (though that would be rad) or pay me for personal training (even more rad). You don’t have to start eating a salad for every meal every day (or ever — I rarely do). You don’t have to teetotal off your wine (I’d die). You don’t have to do 1,000 crunches a night or wake up any earlier than you already do.
And no one is asking you to.
What ARE we asking you to do?
Fucking try. Do something. Make one change. I don’t give a shit how much money you have or how old you are or how many jobs you’re holding down or how many kids you have or how bad your knees are or how overweight you are.
Stop complaining — start doing.
Have something to be proud of and be proud of it.
And maybe quit lying to me about your lack of motivation. Your excuses aren’t fooling anyone.
Oh, and one last thing — if your tracker tells you you’ve hit 10,000 steps before 8am, I’d better see you post that shit on Facebook.
I did. And I’m not sorry about it. You shouldn’t be either.
JTFStrong 