A Revelation and a breakthrough...

I had a revelation about my work the other day ... I've been off for a few weeks, and was to go back on Tuesday (after the long weekend here) for 2 weeks, to "clinic C" where I was working in April and will be working for July and August. On Thursday afternoon, I got a desperate call from "clinic B", where I worked January to March and where I will be working again from September, asking if I could come in Friday as they were really short of doctors. So, I agreed to help out and worked Friday on short-notice.

All the staff seemed quite happy to see me again, as did the doctors who were in, and not just in terms of "thanks for helping us out". And I got a number of nice comments and thank-you's from patients, eg. "this has been the most productive doctor visit I've had in a long time" was one comment that I actually heard a few variants of, in only one day.

So my revelation was that I really feel appreciated at clinic B (and therefore think I've made a good choice to go back there in September), by both my co-workers as well as the patients :-) . Not that I need or expect everyone to thank me and show appreciation constantly, but I think a little bit of appreciation and recognition goes a long way. I realized that in the situation of clinic A (where I worked for 6 years before) or clinic C, with mostly long-term, chronic patients, I didn't really get a lot of appreciation ever and usually unrealistic expectations, complaints and demands more than anything else - tends to wear on you after a while... (I found it ironic last October in my last month at clinic A, when I seemed to get more appreciation then than in my entire 6 years previously at that clinic - little bit too late). I felt really good after work on Friday ...

Then a breakthrough yesterday, I've really been struggling with my running and with my triathlon now in just one week that was starting to worry me a bit. What with not running much over the winter, then my bike crash slowing me down for a while, I'd only done 5 km runs so far and need to run 8 km for the triathlon. I never seemed to get to the point of enjoying any of the runs I was doing, they all seemed to be struggles where I was focussing on how high my heart-rate was getting or how much my legs were hurting or how hot it was out or how much time did I have left before my walk-break (I follow the 10:1 run:walk scheme taught by the Running Room). So yesterday, I ditched my watch with the heart-rate monitor and interval timer and just went out with my old stopwatch. It was a good temperature (low teens C) and really windy (though it makes the running harder I love windy days in general unless it's minus 30 :-) ), and I just went by feel instead of constantly watching my watch. And I had a great run - was aiming for 5 km and did 7.5 km instead, felt great afterwards, and actually not even stiff today, so I have renewed confidence that everything will be fine next week for my triathlon. I may not beat last year's running time, but I should beat last year's overall time (as well as I'll likely blow away my bike time from last year) :-).