Amy Lu's View

It’s Day 33 Part 2.

No, it’s not Day 33 of “Amy at Home”–I think it’s Day 19 of that (I start counting from March 17 when my gym had to close). It’s Day 33 of my 50 Day Blogging Challenge. And it’s Part 2 because I’m posting twice today to make up for missing yesterday.

Now I’ve missed some other days in my challenge but I’ve backdated them. Yes, that was cheating, but I justified it because I started the posts on a previous day or they were about a previous day.

But yesterday I just couldn’t come up with anything. I was spent. So today I am owning my shortcoming. I’m a bit disappointed in my failure, but that’s the point of a challenge, right? It should be challenging, and there’s value in continuining, even when we have missteps.

If I successfully complete my 50 Day Blogging Challenge (50 Days of Amy) even with some cheating and failures, I’m going to consider it a Personal Victory” (PV).

I discovered the idea of a “Personal Victory” a couple of months ago in a Runner’s World magazine column, “This Year I’m Not Chasing a PR. I’m Chasing a PV” by Jess Movold. Runners often talk and think and obsess about our “PR’s–“Personal Records”. These are often time or distance related, such as my Marathon PR time is 4:02:48 for the 2018 Grandma’s Marathon.

(A big diversion, but Holy Shit. I had to look this up because I didn’t remember the time, and I am honestly stunned by what a good time that is. I had to watch the finisher’s video and make sure it was me and not some other 48-year-old Amy Luedtke. How could I forget this? How could I not have this tattooed on my forehead?)

But a Personal Victory is about more than a number. It’s about recognizing the context of your situation and adapting to life as it changes. It’s about pushing yourself to think about things beyond speed and distance and connecting with what you really find meaningful.

I was very inspired by the concept of a PV and definitely intended to blog about it in terms of runing….and months later, because of an ongoing “situation” with my upper left thigh (not sure if it’s a series of injuries related to my Christmas Eve fall or a series of unrelated injuries or bad karma and if it’s muscle or nerve related) I can’t run.

So right now, my running PV is to be patient, and not give up all hope that I will ever run again, and not to feel bad when I compare past victories to today’s situation. My PV is also to keep moving, especially without being able to go to they gym, even if it’s only with long slow walks and riding our stationary bike and walking in place in the kitchen.

One of the things I found most inspiring about the idea of PV’s is being flexible. It’s about not giving up when things don’t go according to plan or we don’t meet our own expectations–whether it’s related to running or blogging or dealing with all your plans being cancelled.

I’m pretty sure the measure of success has changed for most of us in the last several weeks. Not to minimize things or downplay real hardship and trauma many people are dealing with, but there’s a reason there’s so much social media chatter about just wearing pants (I have mixed feelings about my long stretch of not wearing dresses but I’ll save that for backup blog fodder–who knows what I’ll need to resort to my Day 50).