Crogging, Scream-Breathing, and Other Forms of Anxiety (Whole75, Day 67)

I think something snapped in my brain shortly after I wrote my last entry a few days ago. I seriously considered writing another entry later that day, about the...episode I had, but ultimately decided against it.

I've let my anxiety and stress get the better of me too much these last few days weeks for a while now, and it's impacting my health (...and appearance) in a negative way.

I've kept up with the jogging program on my Couch to 5K app, and it's been getting more and more challenging every week. Last week it was 25-minute pops, this week it's 28 and next week, the final week, it's 30. Hopefully by the end of next week I'll be able to jog a 5K in 30 minutes...but to be honest that's pretty unlikely. In order to keep up the jogging motion and not switch to walking after 20-something minutes, when I feel like my body's going to flop into pieces on the trail around me and my lungs are going to implode, I tend to slow my pace down to an exaggerated Baywatch-looking run that I'm really glad people don't see. It's fairly ridiculous. (But I'm trying, dammit.)

Based on the stats logged in the app (which aren't perfect but use the phone's GPS navigation to track my workouts, which is helpful) I ran 2.53 miles yesterday during the 28-minute jogging section, with an average running pace of 11:04 minutes per mile. In order to run about 3.11 miles (5 kilometers) in 30 minutes, I would need a running pace of under 10 minutes per mile. I'm not sure I can get quite that good in a week and a half. And even the 11-minute mile feels like misery and self-pity for the last 12 minutes or so. And my breathing turns into cartoonish scream-huffs just trying to get air in and out.

Maybe I can figure out intervals of running faster/slower the way the program had me running and walking? I don't know. I'm thinking about investing in a Garmin or some kind of "running watch" that tracks your pace and distance, which might be more reliable than an app on the phone. Although in terms of making myself run for longer spaces of time, Couch to 5K has been invaluable. A year ago I probably couldn't run for 30 seconds, let alone run a mile. Now that I think about it, I don't know that I've *ever* been able to run a mile. Now I can run two and a half. That's kind of cool.

Anyway the running doesn't exactly help with the stress, but it does make me exhausted and sweaty enough that it distracts me from the ten million other things conspiring to go wrong during the day.

Here's the thing: it's important for me to be able to control things in my own life. The food I eat, my activities, my calendar, my budget, that kind of thing. I know there are a fuckton of things beyond my control, and I try hard to work alongside those things, but I feel better knowing what I'm responsible for and taking comfort in the fact that "at least" I know I can walk and run and work on my health.

The thing is, what with the aforementioned ten million things conspiring to go wrong, things that are within my control are trying hard to get out of my control. And that's when, I've discovered, my brain tends to go nuclear.

Example: after writing my most recent entry I got changed to go do my afternoon run. I didn't have a lot of clean clothes so I had to use an old pair of workout pants, which are now much too big. I have a little tub of safety pins I bring with me so I secured these stupid-looking things (or so I thought) with big cartoonish pins and headed out to the trail, where I turned on my music and the C25K app and began to jog.

Almost immediately I felt a stabbing pain in my hip; the second I started running (not during the walk, mind you), the safety pins had come unhinged.

They hadn't broken, they hadn't bent. They had literally unhinged as though a ghost hand had reached down and gone "NOPE," applied dextrous pressure and moved the pin part out of the catch. They had one job to do, and they failed, and my frazzled brain was CONVINCED they were doing it on purpose. I reiterate: safety pins.

I kept grabbing at my pants and trying to re-pin them as I ran (because if I stopped running I'd have to start the workout over), and it was fruitless. They wouldn't stay pinned. And then my phone fell out of my pocket and smacked on the ground and ripped the headphones out of my ears. And then my shoe came untied. And then and then and then...

I stopped and restarted that run three times. Finally when I was like "fuck it, the pants are just going to be really loose, I have to run, I HAVE TO," and they literally were falling down and were headed towards my knees, I stopped, turned off my phone, and burst into tears.

I had this ridiculous certainty in my heart that some invisible force was sabotaging me, taking the ONE THING within my control and fucking with it, so I couldn't run, ha ha, isn't it funny, you're going to be an obese fugly pachyderm failure forever, how cute that you're trying so hard, ha ha ha. And I could not talk myself out of that tree.

I said many curse words, very loudly, many times over, and was later extremely grateful that I was alone on the trail (I have not since seen any videos on YouTube featuring a crying weirdo having a mental breakdown on the Coyote Creek trail, so hopefully no one was hiding in the bushes watching me.)

Walking/ jogging back to the office while crying and saying "fuck you" to those stupid pants was the strangest experience. I later discovered that "crogging", or cry-jogging, is a very real thing and often trends on Twitter. So weird.

At my lunch break I drove to Ross and bought new workout pants (surrendering control of what size pants the store carried, which is either clown-pants-falling-down or HELLO-MR-CAMELTOE), found the least-offensive ones, drove back to the office, put them on, and completed that stupid 25-minute run. I was glad to have it finished, but still felt like I'd failed because of earlier.

Keep in mind: my pants being bigger is a GOOD thing. The whole reason I'm doing this stupid fitness thing is to lose this goddamn weight. I'm confounded that THAT was the catalyst for my brain going bye-bye.

Each day since I'm reminding myself to breathe, to be prepared, and to control what I can and work around what I can't. It's much, much harder than usual lately and I think it's just from overstimulation: craziness at work, performing in one show and rehearsing another, prepping for Christmas, everything.

Last night Panda and I got a Christmas tree (the first tree we've had since we moved into our apartment a few years ago.) He declared (for both of us) that we were going to have a stress-free evening "even if it fucking kills us," and he was right to do it. We had fun. And now we have a pretty tree, and the apartment is decorated, and we neither of us had a tantrum or an anxiety attack on the trip. He was seriously a lifesaver last night (yesterday was another harsh one at work.)

Eight more days. And I am having the biggest glass of whiskey you ever saw.