Running and Impatience. Spritual progress

Running

Well, I am am still continuing with my running and have entered Cardiff half marathon so there is no stopping now. I have even started running into work instead of cycling to get my mileage up.

The problem is I am a bit impatient, I would like to be running at at least a 7 minute mile pace as I would like to do 1 hour 30 minutes or better in the half marathon and after 3 weeks of running I have not achieved that pace. I did start letting this distract me too much, but on Wednesday on the train going into work, I decided to meditate for 5 minutes as I approached Llantwit station and calm myself before my 3 mile run into work.

During my run as well, I was not worried about what pace I was doing or how far I've got to run, I simply got into a rhythm and enjoyed the run. As a result of this I felt very good during the run and did actually do my fastest time so far running from Llantwit station to my office. My average pace for the month so far is 8:24 per mile, but that is not what matters, I must remember to run to enjoy it and not to let it worry me that I'm not running as fast as I would like. I've only been back running for 4 weeks so I must learn to be patient and let things happen when they are supposed to happen and not try and force it too much.

So I am not back to enjoying my running and I do feel good about myself.  You can keep track of my progress on Endomondo web site, where you can view my workouts, both cycling and running, and see where I've run and how far. I use the app on my Android phone to log all my workouts, it's a very nice little tool making good use of the phones features.

So far, as of today (Friday 17 June), according to Endomondo I have run a total distance of 57.86 miles in a time of 8h:15m:59s over 19 workouts. My average pace is 8m:34s so that is not too bad. One nice little feature, it says I've burned 6484 callories which is equivalent to 12 burgers! I wonder if they are veggie burgers?

Spiritual progress

So far my spiritual progress has not been going too good, it seems like I am struggling to find my true self and meaning. The past couple of weeks have not been the best spiritually, and I have been a bit lapse with my meditations and, when I do meditate, I have not really gained anything from them. I went camping at the start of the month with Bernadette, Robert and some of out friends, but it didn't prove that successful and I came back from the trip not feeling too happy. I wanted a perfect camping trip and I was expecting too much from it and that didn't help at all. This was wrong as I should have enjoyed the trip and overcome all the problems and upsets that happened, but I was unable to do it. I felt a bit of a failure.

Even though I have been running and that has been making me feel good, I still could not get back into my mediation. I felt I was spiralling out of control. But, as a result of my run on Wednesday and a successful meditation at the Sri Chinmoy centre that evening, I feel I am now back on the path as I am feeling happy again as I am starting to get some control back to my life.