Just Be Stubborn

I would like to preface this post by saying that I generally advocate listening, and listening well.  I believe, as I learned in rehab (yes, that kind of rehab, which I will explain soon enough), that to be aware is to be alive.  Being aware necessitates being attentive, which means listening to not just what is said, but to what is not said, and to what cannot be said, because it's not linguistic.  I mean that you have to be able to listen to your body, to the body language of the people around you, to interpret expressions, lack of expression, actions, and environments.  By paying attention to all of that (and whatever I may not have mentioned that is of importance), you will have plenty of things to do, and boredom can never be an excuse for your actions (or lack of action).  If you are aware and attentive, if you listen to your mind, body, and to others, you can learn quite a bit, and begin to live well.

But as is true of any suggested rule or set of rules that I can think of (and being a philosopher, I can think of many, trust me) there are counterexamples, exceptions.  In the case of the maxim which can envelope what I said above, namely; listen and learn--there are times when you have to go against the suggestions of said rule. For example, when you wretch at the smell of some food item, when it totally turns you off if it is the main part of a dish, and when you can barely touch said food item without being sort of grossed out, don't eat it!  Nature has given us plenty of differently textured, colored, flavored, and scented things to eat, so we should just consume what we aren't repulsed by.  That was the case with bananas and me.  I have never like bananas, they always smelled weird to me, they looked weired, the few times I tasted them I gagged, and I found very little appealing about them.  But before I started this running venture, while working in the health and nutrition sector of retail, I found out a few things that warmed me up to bananas.

A) Potassium is key for sending messages throughout the nervous system.  This includes the brain, muscles (like the heart, muscle tissue in the intestines, and other organs), and nerves throughout the body.

B) Potassium can be the cause of cramps during endurance exercises such as running (RUNNING!!!)

C) Potassium is so hard to get in the necessary amounts from any source other than BANANAS that you would have to swallow 30 large potassium supplement pills, eat a few CUPS of Almonds (which would just about tax your fat allowance for the day) or.....eat a BANANA!!!!

So I decided that I had to give in, and I started making fruit smoothies almost daily, with a huge banana in them.  You know what, I kind of like bananas now.  So I heard the maxims that nature provided me, and I listened to my wretching body, and I promptly ignored it.

Also, as has been documented in previous posts, I have  been dealing with a foot....deal.  It's like an injury, but less consistent.  I'll run one day and it'll be sore near the end of the run and for an hour or so later, then end the day fine.  I'll wake up the next morning (like yesterday morning, for instance), and it'll be stiff up to the ankle and hurting all day.  So I gave it from last Thursday to this Monday off, trying to be attentive to my body's signals.  But when I woke up today with no pain or stiffness, I decided that yeah, it's good to listen, but if the person you're listening to is f*@#ing crazy, you won't learn anything, and you'll waste time.  So I went out and ran a full 5 kilometers, fully expecting my foot to start babbling on halfway through, still making no sense, but telling me to stop.  So about halfway through, as ol' lefty started nagging me, I decided that since my calves were still a bit sore from Monday's big run, I'll push more from my quads down to my knees. And whaddaya know, this shut my foot right up.  I ran the next 1 and a half miles in that mode and my foot stopped bothering me.  When I got to the home stretch, I even stepped up the pace a little and ended with both feet doing fine.  I also managed to beat my current solo 5k record by nearly a minute, clocking in at 27:53.

So what have I learned from this experience?  Sure, listening is good.  If you don't listen you your mother, she'll get angry and punish you.  If you don't listen to your girlfriend, you can bank on not having said girlfriend for long, and if you don't listen to your body, it will rebel and make you sorry.  But just because you listen doesn't mean that you have to accept what's being said.  So I found that while it was good to listen to my foot's moaning and groaning, after a while I just realized that 's moaning and groaning because it's a pussy (which prompted me to ask it to stop pussy-footing around, *zing*), and while I should listen to it, I can also tell it to stop being whiny and run with me.  Stubborn? Maybe.  Effective?  Absolutely.