Yesterday was no exception. I was running, and it was lightly drizzling. It may even only have qualified as misting. Any way, the temperature was cool and it was heavenly. I was running to a recently purchased song from OneRepublic called, "Good Life." And I got to thinking...
First, I am ridiculously blessed to have a wonderful husband who has been such a source of strength, encouragement, and support, and to have a son who brightens my day with his smile, melts my heart with his laugh, and inspires me with his curiosity and persistence.
Second, I am lucky to have good health and the ability to run.
With these thoughts swirling in my head, I started thinking about the Richmond marathon that I signed up for back in January. As you can tell for someone who signed up for a marathon and blogs about health and fitness, I sure have been quite about my marathon training. And that's because I haven't been doing it.
I wondered where that fire went. Why did I let it burn out? What threw me off course?
While I have been running, I have not made marathon training a priority. I had a lot on my plate this year - new mom, working mom, moving twice, etc. Any time I tried to stick to a training schedule (okay, the only time), I became frustrated when week after week I wasn't getting all my runs in and hitting my mileage. I felt like it was putting a lot of stress on me as a new mom and a wife. I was still trying to adjust to life with a baby and life with a baby and working and to throw marathon training in on top of it was too much for me.
So my plan that I had not formally committed to yet was to switch my entry from the marathon to the half-marathon; however, I have yet to be able to make that phone call. Maybe somewhere in the back of my head I figured things would change.
Well back to my original story, while I was running yesterday and listening to "Good Life," I thought why don't I just try to go for it? What is stopping me?
FEAR. Fear of failure. Fear of injury.
And then I thought about the example that I want to set for Phinn.
Do I want to pass up opportunities or things I want to do because I am afraid? I want Phinn to keep his curious personality and his sense of exploration. Don't I need to show him that it is important to try new things, even if I might fail? Isn't failure just as important as success, if not more important?
I am still not committing to running the marathon. If I think a marathon will only set me up for injury, then I'll change to the half. Otherwise I'll run the full.
But I am committing to running as often and as far as I can and see where that gets me come race time. I am committing to the hard work, and I am also committing to be flexible. I am not going to give up when things interrupt my runs - such is life and you have to learn to work with it.
Look for more running updates from me as I cobble together some sort of training plan and do my best to stick to it. And I am asking you to help hold me accountable. If I am not speaking up, ask me how the training is going. Keep me honest :)
So here is your big takeaway - Don't put off your dreams and goals because you are afraid of failure or you think life is going to get in the way. The risk of failure will always be there, you just have to learn from it and come out the other side stronger; and life, well life will always be giving us little speed bumps and hurdles and you just have to work with them.
Happy running to all you weekend runners! I'll see you out there!!
No comments:
Post a Comment