One day you wake up and you realize you’re in a new phase of life. You look back and it hits you that you’re old. You’ve stepped over a threshold and things are never going to be quite like they were before. I’ve been a little slow on the uptake, but it’s recently hit me that there are certain things that I either can’t do, or it’s going to take a lot of work to keep doing them.

For instance, I completed my third competitive half marathon this past weekend. I know I should be celebrating the fact that I finished, but I’m finding it kind of hard. I’m having trouble wrapping my head around the fact that this half was 30 minutes slower than the last one, and that one was 30 minutes slower than the first. It took me just shy of four hours to complete this course. As I think about it, I’m not sure that I can finish in a sufficiently reasonable amount of time in another one without a significant change in my habits.

I did some light training for this event, but nowhere near what I needed to do to actually make it a race. For me, it was a plod to the finish, each step an exercise in mind over body. I had to keep telling myself to move forwards. It was pretty much a constant battle for 13.1 miles. When I was done, I wasn’t all that physically tired, but I was mentally exhausted. Frankly, it wasn’t a positive experience.

If you’re a runner, you know that you shouldn’t make a decision about future competitions for several days (weeks? months?) after an event. It’s just not a good idea to decide on things when your mind and body are either on a high or low because of the most recent event. So I’m not saying that I will or will not enter into any races next year. I am telling myself that if I decide that I’m going to enter into any competitions…I have to properly prepare.

That’s where the whole getting older thing comes into play. When I was younger, I could train like crazy one day, get a good night’s rest, and be ready to train again the next day. Since my diabetes diagnosis seven years ago it takes me a lot longer to recover from any exercise. I know part of it is the diabetes. I know part of it is getting older. But frankly I don’t care what the cause is. What matters is that it’s hard to get motivated to exercise when I know I’m still going to feel exhausted the next day. Part of it is that I keep trying to do things I’m not really ready for. I workout too hard, then have to take a couple days to recover. Then I resume that same cycle. You’d think I’d know better…but I’m apparently a slow learner.

The funny thing is, I woke up feeling old two days before the half marathon. It was weird, I woke up and realized that I felt vastly older than I did the day before. And I felt older than I ever had felt. Not just tired. Not just worn out. I honestly felt old. It didn’t help to carry those thoughts and feelings into the 5K on Saturday nor into the Half Marathon the following day.

Today, four days after the half marathon, I feel like I’m physically recovered from the half marathon. My body isn’t aching all that much beyond the normal aches that I have. But that’s just it, I ache all the time now. I feel like I’ve dipped below the extra aches that I added for the two competitions, so I’m back to my usual aches and pains. Yet that set of physical discomforts is not motivating me to workout today. I keep reminding myself, in a self-defeating way, that if I workout tonight I’m going to feel it tomorrow and into the weekend. But if I don’t workout then I’m going to be worse the next time I actually convince myself to workout.

It’s a vicious cycle!

It’s hard to admit that I’m going to have to change my workout regimen to something that my body can support. Something that won’t make me feel awful the next day. A workout that old people do. And I don’t want to. I want to be young and carefree. I want to be able to workout in any way I can conceive and feel great the next day. I want to be able to eat whatever I want, whenever I want, without any gastric consequences. Or that awful feeling that causes me to just lay down and rethink what I just ate.

Honestly, it sucks getting older. And it’s even worse when it’s both a physical and mental issue. Frankly, I feel old in my bones and in my brain. And I don’t like it.

So there it is…my battle with waking up and feeling old isn’t just beginning…but it’s an ongoing battle that I have to fight everyday. I’m finally realizing that I’m going to have to scale back and workout in ways that my body can support. Ways that my mind will accept. Ways that will let me get into a regular regimen again.

I’d love to say that I know that this is just a phase. I’d love to know that if I start slowly and build up I’ll be able to do all the things I used to be able to do. But I don’t know if that’s possible. I want to believe that it’s possible, but I don’t know.

And that’s the hardest part…