There’s a weasel living inside my head.

A bad weasel.

A sneaky weasel.

A weasel I could do without.

This Sunday is the Bridge City Boogie. I’ve signed up to run 5K. I’ve been planning to run 5K since last fall. I trained for awhile. Then something came up. Time went by and I started training again. And something else came up. (Don’t ask what, because truthfully I don’t even remember.) So last week I realized that the Boogie was in 2 weeks. I really want to do this. Time to get serious.

So last Monday I decided I’d try running 1K without stopping – just to see if I could. I’ve been training doing walk/run but wanted to see if I could do1K non-stop. I was smart enough to slow it down and did just fine. (I’m running on our treadmill, so it’s easy to set a pace.) In fact it went so well, I kept on and did 2K. I was pretty proud of myself.

I decided that I’d run Mon Wed and Fri. for the two weeks leading up to the Boogie, and add half a kilometer each day. I even got a bit stupid and tried speeding up some – MISTAKE. But I’ve managed. And I’ve slowed back down.

The weasel showed up last Friday. It shows up when I have half a kilometer to go. It says nice things like “Wow! You’ve done really well! Better than you expected! Good for you.” which is great, but it doesn’t stop there. “You know, you look tired. There’d be no shame in stopping now. You can be proud of what you’ve accomplished. Maybe you should stop now. What’s another half a kilometer going to do? You can make it up next time – when you’re not so tired.” And so it continues for the whole last half a kilometer. It doesn’t matter how far I’m running. It knows I’m weakest – mentally, more than physically – at that last half a kilometer.

So far I’ve been able to resist its siren song with statements (said out loud, of course) like “SHUT UP WEASEL” “BACK OFF WEASEL” “I CAN SO DO THIS WEASEL”. So far so good. Monday morning I ran 3.5K. Tomorrow I’m doing 4K. As long as I don’t weasel out of it.

Wish me luck!