Friday, June 22, 2012

i almost did something crazy.

my husband has a lot of really good qualities. he is kind, loving, thoughtful, helpful, encouraging, compassionate, undeniably handsome, and a million other wonderful things. but these good qualities are not the focus of todays post, so i will refrain from listing all of them. (also, i dont want you to get a stomachache from all the sweetness and then vomit all over your computer, because that is a mess that i most definitely do not have any time or desire to clean up.)

my husband also has a few really annoying qualities. he can be forgetful, he is compeletly incapable of multi-tasking, and he tends to put off doing little things like clipping his toenails until they get to the point where i am forced to consider him in posession of a deadly weapon. (i'm sure there are others, but i still want my husband to love me and trust me to not air all our dirty laundry on the internet and again - not the point of this post)

one thing that i either love about my husband or find extremely frustrating, depending on the day, is the fact that he is extremely reasonable. he is not a big risk-taker. he does not make quick decisions. he researches and makes extremely detailed plans before he will tackle a project. whereas i have a tendency to lose myself in irrationality, make impulsive decisions, and begin a project where my only plan is to fly by the seat of my pants and see what happens, he is the one who will talk me down and help us come to a very reasonable compromise.

this trait saved me recently from dropping $1500 on a rug for our dining room, (it was on sale! down from $5000!) and we found a perfectly acceptable and possibly superior substitute a few weeks later for $50.

this week, my husbands reasonability also saved me from signing myself up for an intense physically demanding experience that in my mind was intended to jumpstart my desire to start working out more which was fueled by my at-work health screening at which i was informed that while all my numbers were good and within range, there were still approximately 3 million things that i needed to be doing better.

it really did seem like a good idea, and i was pretty sure that the hubs would be on board. after all, there was a groupon involved! a savings of over $100 if we both signed up!

but then the hubs said no. he didnt really want to do it. he didnt think he was physically able to do something so demanding on such short notice. he thought it sounded like fun, but the timetable was just too short.

i fought back. i argued. i bargained. i might have shed a few manipulative tears. and then i began to lose my impulsive resolve and doubt myself. because if Mark, my ultimate guide when it comes to all things exercisey, didnt think HE was up for it? how could i have deluded myself into thinking that I would be up for it? and after a while, i started to come to terms with the reality that i was over-estimating my physical ability at this particular moment in time.

so all of that just to say that i did not sign up for the rebel race that is going to be in our area in two weeks.

oh, just jumping over FIRE. nbd. 

yeah. somehow in my head i thought that i, who has not run anywhere close to 3 miles in the last several months and gets tired just thinking about going for a saturday morning bike ride, would miraculously be competent enough to tackle a race that is basically a 5K on steroids complete with mud, fire, barbed wire, and other various obstacles.

can you imagine me doing this 2 weeks from now? yeah, me neither.

it looks like a ton of fun, but as my husband so lovingly pointed out, it might take me a little more than 2 weeks to be even a little bit ready for this kind of thing, so that i could walk away from it with the desired sense of pride and accomplishment instead of the more likely feeling of failure and self-loathing. i'm still kind of bummed about giving up on this plan and admitting defeat of my insane impulsiveness to his calculated reason. but of course (this time) he is right.

so i'm going to start a little smaller. i think i might just start with a regular 5K first. but by next year i plan on being in much better shape, and then i am SO doing this.

(PS the Groupon is apparently still good for a few more days if anyone is interested and in better shape than me...)

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