How vanity gets in the way of me being in shape:
Exhibit One:
In December I signed up for a triathlon. A few weeks later, I decided to switch up my gym routine by biking AND running on the same day. I biked 10 miles and then rushed over to the treadmill and started running. After one minute, I had run a whole .1 miles and every breath sounded like a desperate gasp for life. After one and half minutes, a woman got on the treadmill next to me. Still gasping for my life, I could not focus on anything except my intense worry that she would glance over to see how far/long I had been running to be working so hard. I was so torn by my internal struggle of whether or not I should tell her I had biked first and was not this out of breath from 1 minute of running that I finally just gave up and decided to go home instead.
Exhibit Two:
There are a lot of things about this triathlon that should worry me. I cannot swim a freestyle stroke without dislocating my shoulder, so my wimpy adaptive swim style is weak. I enjoy biking, but often lose focus while I am out with the boys and end up swerving into their paths and/or bikes, usually resulting in my falling over. Now I expect to bike with a group of people? I hate to run. However, the thing I am most concerned about is what I will look like during all of this, more specifically, what I will be wearing, what I am doing with my hair, you know - the important stuff. Also my only goal for the race besides finishing? Not having anyone over 300 lbs. finish before me. Set your goals high kids.
Exhibit Three:
My training partner and I went shopping for swimsuits on Saturday. See Exhibit Two for why this is so important. We went to two stores that had suits and five or six really cute consignment/gift/vintage stores that we saw while we driving in between those two sporting good stores. It was a super fun day, but no suit has been purchased yet!
I'm not sure how the whole tri thing is going to turn out for me, but I do foresee plenty of laughable moments. As the French philosopher/author Henri Bergson said: "The only cure for vanity is laughter, and the only fault that is laughable is vanity."
1 comment:
Nice to see that I am not the only one that over-analyzes what people think of me, or what I think they think of me. We are our own worst judge! I think the important thing to focus on is having fun. I know I sound so cliche, but it's the truth. Have fun and it will be worth all the humiliation!
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