Is was a Monday. When the alarm went off I immediately rolled over, blindly grabbed my phone from the night stand, cracked open one eye, and started sifting my way through appointments, projects, and email to get a picture of how my week looked. As usual, when I had dealt with all the pressing matters, I opened an email from MapMyFitness entitled, “Weekly Workout Summary.” This is a pretty fun email that takes the week’s mileage, time, and workouts and puts them in one place. At a glance I can see some rudimentary progression. Things to notice include, increased mileage, increased workouts, higher calories burned, or in my case on that day, more time spent working out.

I was in a phase of lower weekly mileage and increased speed, interval, tempo, and hill workouts. I guess in my mind I had figured that this lower mileage and faster workouts would mean less time spent. But the number of hours shown was surprisingly high. I didn’t immediately think anything of this but as the day went on I realized that I spend a ton of time running, working out, and thinking about these things.

This is all time well spent for my life, but at the moment it felt a bit isolating. I mean, I don’t typically run or workout with anyone during the week. I just grab my hydration pack and go. Outside of running, I work from home the majority of the time. And as a result, the majority of my days can be spent away from other people. When this all occurred to me, I didn’t know how to feel about it. I like hanging out with people, but truly wouldn’t change my running habits for anything. Here’s where the self-criticizing little voice inside my head popped up and said, “You’re doing something wrong. You’re not good enough. You’re selfish.”

But when I shook off the inherent self-disparaging voice and stepped back to actually take a look at my time, I realized that many things I enjoy doing each week aren’t as isolated as my negativity would have me think. I really enjoy doing speed work each week with my coach, Katherine, and fellow runners. They bring a conversational element to the track and collectively have a lot more experience and knowledge than I do, so picking their brains about racing and working out is really fun. On the weekends Katherine and I try to run in the same location so that we can warm up together. Sometimes we talk, other times we don’t, but it’s nice to be together in the car to and from the greenways, as well as on the warmup. This website and podcast provide another great place for me to interact with people. I also co-host a pop-culture/entertainment podcast with my brother each week called Stay On Target. As far as work goes, I take any chance I get to head to my favorite coffee shop across town and send invoices, emails, write, and journal over a great Monkey Mocha (a banana, chocolate, coffee hug in a cup). I know every barista in that place and love seeing them.

These are the ways I get human interaction. This is how I stay connected to a community through hours and hours dedicated to running by myself and working by myself. This is the life I enjoy. Simple and complex at the same time. So on days when I am too hard on myself and feel isolated, all I need to do is step back and take a look at things in a different way.

Have you ever felt isolated?
How do you deal with these feelings when they occur?