Where's Waldo?

Do you all remember the X-Files?  Loved that show... I even had a key ring that my little brother gave me for Christmas that read:

Trust No One ~ Fox Mulder

No one, Fox?  No one at all?  Not your mother?  Your Father?  Your BFF Bart Yasso?  Your AP English Teacher?  Your Running Coach?  

Huh.  Serious Trust Issues there.  I wonder if Fox had MOJO issues too...

About a week ago I went out and ran 13.1 miles for my friend in honor of her brother.  I wasn’t even sure that I could cover the distance.  It’s not like I've been running that much.   I did it though.  Easily, in fact, when you compare it to the 14 miler I did a few days later.  Perspective, now you have it.

I didn’t know it then, but by the time I hit 8 miles of that 13.1, I was already on the path to finding my mojo.  And the answer came to me when I was rereading Mere’s blog post.  Where’s Waldo?

Oh, the Waldo I'm thinking of is probably 50 Shades of tied up in the red room of pain, also known as High School English class...

Self-trust is the first secret of success. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson.

Emerson is really right. 

Yeah. 

Hard to accept that a dead guy knows more about running than I do.

But he does.

If you can’t trust yourself, who can you trust? 

I think a lot about trust these days.  I have a hard time with it.  Not in a romantic light.  No, this is much more personal than that.  Much more.

This is about my running.  

And here's what I realized.  At the same time I lost my running MOJO, I lost trust in the one person I always believed I could believe in.  So why have I suddenly lost faith in myself?

And it's not just me.  It seems to be a summer epidemic around here.  My friends have lost their MOJO's too.

We’ve looked around in some crazy places from Sports Backers MTT runs to 5Ks.  Even went looking in some mojitos, and all that seemed to provide was a temporary sense of Cuban rhythm that was completely unfounded. 

At first I thought maybe the loss of MOJO was spreading like negative energy...  and then I realized the common theme I’m hearing comes down to one word.

Trust.

My friends don’t trust they can run fast anymore.  And everytime I lace on my new Mizuno Wave Riders I don't believe I can either.  I'm sad when I look at my Garmin splits after almost every run.  I'm questioning my hunger, doubting that I should be eating *this much*, not trusting the voice in my head that tells me to eat more.  I'm doing all this training toward a race that I might not be prepared for because... well, I suck at triathlons.  I don't trust my GBA** Super Powers to get me to the finish line in the (goal time) that I want to finish it in.

Am I the worlds worst triathlete?
Am I going to finish?
Am I going to fail?
Am I training all these miles for nothing?

Am I over training?  Under training?

Am I, AM I?

And with every Am I question we collectively ask ourselves, we chip away at our core, peppering our self trust with pock marks and dents until it’s an unrecognizable lump that’s susceptible to rust and decay.

IF you don’t trust yourself, who will you trust?

No one.
And if Waldo is right, we must have self trust in order to succeed at any of this running nonsense.

Belief in ones self is the foundation for the belief in others.  

So let's just step back for a minute and identify what weapons we are using on ourselves this summer.  The Garmin, the Doubt, and any other ways that we lie to ourselves when we utter the words, "I suck".  Those are the weapons of MOJO mass destruction... so let's now determine how we can repair the damage.

And let's see how we can prevent a re-injury.

Because we don't suck.
I mean seriously.  We couldn't.
It's GBA** rule #2 subsection b.

~savor the run~