The Best Thing About Pain?

Earlier this year I did a post for CRN (Complete Running Network) about adding inspirational movie quotes to your running playlist. It’s a fun distraction to hear quotes from your favorite movies interspersed with the songs that get you pumped up. The other night I was watching the movie G.I. Jane (don’t judge) starring Demi Moore as a woman trying to make it as a member of the Navy SEALS, when I came across the following quote that is being immediately added into the running playlist rotation:

“Pain is your friend, your ally, it will tell you when you are seriously injured, it will keep you awake and angry, and remind you to finish the job and get the hell home. But you know the best thing about pain? It lets you know you’re not dead yet!”

You can find a link to the mp3 file and the wav sound file at the bottom of this page.

Speaking of CRN, I don’t think I linked to either of my 2 most recent posts over there. (This is October’s and this is November’s.) So, if you haven’t already read them then you should go do that now, and in the future don’t wait for me to link to them you lazy sack of slow twitch muscle fibers. Seriously, do I have to do everything for you? You might be thinking that reading both of them is too much effort in which case you and I are a lot alike, and you should totally just read November’s because I kind of phoned in October’s. (Hey, just like I’m phoning in today’s post!)

I also want to mention the Treadmill Vehicle, as seen on With Leather (video below). I couldn’t think of a clever segue to allow me to just radically change topics like that in the middle of a post, so it’s a good thing that I don’t allow trivial things like flow and style to influence my writing. At any rate, the Treadmill Vehicle is claiming to be the first man powered treadmobile, but if you’ve been a reader of Half-Fast since the beginning (you’re still here?) then you will remember a couple of posts that I wrote about the Treadmill Bike. I think the Treadmill Bike people have grounds to sue the Treadmill Vehicle people and more importantly I think they’re both morons. A bicycle is much more convenient than either of these two options for getting around and if you wanted to run... then why wouldn’t you just run?




Have a great weekend everyone!

Inspiration in a Quote

I’ve never really taken part in Take It and Run Thursday (TIaRT), which is a weekly meeting of the running minds over at Runner’s Lounge every Thursday. Is it because I’m a maverick and I prefer to do my own thing? Is it because I don’t like being tied down to a specific topic? Is it because I’m highly under-qualified to give advice? No, mostly I think it comes down to laziness. Not my laziness mind you, Tom and Amy’s laziness. Tom and Amy never ever send me a personal e-mail to remind me that it’s Thursday and spell out the topic of the TIaRT. I guess that they figure it’s enough that they tell us what the topic is the previous week and then post about it on the Runner’s Lounge Wednesday and Thursday, but that just feels so impersonal. I mean, is it too much to ask that they pick up the phone and call me?

This week’s theme is Running Quotes and Sayings. When it comes to motivational quotes I’ve always loved Despair.com’s Motivation Poster which says “If a pretty poster and a cute saying are all it takes to motivate you, you probably have a very easy job. The kind robots will be doing soon.” The funny thing is, there are some quotes that really do motivate me to get out the door and run. I guess I should make sure my resume is updated.

The first two quotes I’ll share with you are original Vanilla quotes. I wrote them myself, at least I think I did. It’s quite possible that I read them somewhere and then forgot about them, which by the way is the official line that I will be sticking with.

“Respect the distance, don’t fear it.” I scrawled this across the bottom of my marathon training plan in bold red ink. I had become so focused on respecting the distance that I had placed it on a pedestal. I was so fearful of becoming overconfident that I was completely losing all my confidence. I already had visions of how tough it would be at the end. I was already preparing myself for the final miles to be an exercise in futility. I don’t think it has to be like that. I don’t think it will be easy by any means but I see no reason with the right training, that I can’t finish this marathon strong. “Respect the distance, don’t fear it,” is my happy middle ground between being overly confident and expecting a dismal failure.

“I’m in ‘like’ with running, I’m in love with better results.” Coincidentally, I first wrote that phrase for my Open Mic Friday interview at Runner’s Lounge. The idea behind this quote is that I love getting better, I love getting faster, and I’ll do whatever it takes to make that happen. I like running, I enjoy it, but what I love is getting better at it. There will probably come a time when I reach some kind of peak and I will no longer be able to get any faster or any better. I’m not sure what will happen when that day comes, but I’ll let you know when I get there.

Along the same line of thought, I have always loved the quote that Frayed Laces uses all the time: “There will be a day when you can no longer do this... Today is NOT that day.”

Finally, here are a couple that I’ve actually posted before, I’ve never been able to pin down exactly who said these so I’m not going to give any credit other than to say that these aren’t mine:

“Somewhere in the world someone is training when you are not. When you race him, he will win.”

“Every morning in Africa, a gazelle wakes up. It knows it must outrun the fastest lion or it will be killed. Every morning in Africa, a lion wakes up. It knows it must run faster than the slowest gazelle, or it will starve. It doesn’t matter whether you’re a lion or gazelle - when the sun comes up, you’d better be running.”

I think that’s enough quotivation out of me for one day, but be sure to check out what other bloggers are saying on this issue by heading over to Runner’s Lounge.

Today's Inspirational Quote

"Workouts are like brushing my teeth; I don't think about them, I just do
them. The decision has already been made." - Patti Sue Plumer, U.S.
Olympian

If I brushed my teeth at all regularly then this would probably be a great analogy. In order to be more accurate for my purposes I'll just replace 'brushing my teeth' with 'taking my morning leak' because that decision has definitely been made, sometimes I don't even really wake up for it. You too can change the quote to be more appropriate for how you view your workouts.

Monday’s Inspirational Quote

"Every morning in Africa, a gazelle wakes up. It knows it must outrun the fastest lion or it will be killed. Every morning in Africa, a lion wakes up. It knows it must run faster than the slowest gazelle, or it will starve. It doesn't matter whether you're a lion or gazelle - when the sun comes up, you'd better be running." – Unknown.

I've seen this credited to Maurice Green, Roger Bannister, African Proverb, Anonymous, and Unknown but I don't know which one is correct. Probably none of them.

Today is your lucky day because today's quote comes with a demonstration video. This video has been on youtube for over a month which means that if you're at all connected or part of the 'in' crowd on the internets then you've already seen it somewhere. I would have posted it sooner but it wasn't until today that I found a legitimate way to tie it to a running blog. Enjoy.

Inspiration

I try to post here at least once a day during the week, but I'm sorry to tell you that I'm just going to phone it in today. Hey, what did you expect from a blog named half-fast. I'm feeling pretty half-fast about everything right now, so it's a good thing that today is scheduled as an off-day. Is there any better feeling than checking your training schedule on a dreary Friday and realizing you don't have to run that day? Nope, I’ve checked my ‘feelings chart’ and it says there isn’t. It's like getting a permission slip to be a lazy bum all day. My apologies if I’m bringing any of you down and you were planning to do some speedwork or a long run today. Don’t mind me, I’m just going to be reclining over here with my feet on the desk. "Hey, somebody pass me that bag of pork rinds!"

Just because I would hate to be the reason you didn’t run today here’s an inspirational quote to get you out the door:
"Somewhere in the world someone is training when you are not. When you race him, he will win." - Tom Fleming's Boston Marathon training sign on his wall.

Nothing else to see here. I'll post my weekly running log sometime over the weekend, whenever I feel like getting around to it. Thanks to Copacabana Runners which is where my lazy butt stole researched the quote.