Today for me was one of those days...
It started out innocently enough. I got up at 5am to eat an English muffin and to have some tea before my weekly Wednesday morning track session. Drove down to work (where we have a track) and met up with my coach.
It was a perfect morning - cool, clear, crisp. Just the sort of day that you hope for when hitting the track. The goal was to warm up for a 1 mile, do 6 miles at 6:05 pace, then a 1 mile warm down. Considering I had never run this fast (for this long) ever before there was a small bit of uncertainty but I truly believed I could do it.
We began our 6 mile session and all was going great. The first 2.5 miles were almost what I would consider comfortable. It wasn't taxing it was manageable, nice, steady.
But then it happened. I could feel it happening and there wasn't anything I could do about it.
I asked my coach (PC) if we could stop for just a few seconds.
His response "No! During the marathon the pace group or the people you are running with are not going to stop for you."
Yeah - OK - good point. Not what I wanted to hear but knew it was the truth.
So what was happening? Why did I need to stop?
My right shoe had come untied! Ugh!
Rookie mistake but wait I'm not a rookie?!
So I had to stop and tie my shoe and in the process lost 25 seconds. Yikes!
So now what?
I started running again and tried to block all the chatter in my head. The chatter that was saying "you are now officially off pace just stop" or the chatter that was saying "just wait until your coach comes back around and hop back on the 6:05 train."
But instead of listening to that I started running again, I knew that I was not going to hit my time but I was not going to give up. I was going to finish the 6 miles and still do it as fast as I could.
Yeah I know this whole thing may seem like no big deal to some people...it's just a track workout, it's just a silly dream I'm chasing, but it was a resolve tester.
I realized later in the day that even though I didn't hit my goal pace I learned more from the workout than if things would have gone perfectly. I didn't quit, I didn't wait to latch back on to my coach. I kept going and finished those 6 miles. It was harder than it should have been because I had to run the last 3 miles by myself and I had to shut out the negative thoughts in my head.
I realized that we all have days that don't go right or situations that don't turn out the way we planned. But ultimately we are in control of how we react to those circumstances. We have the ability to take a challenging situation and turn it into something more positive. Maybe it's still not perfect or not up to expectations but at least we have the ability to be proud of how we left things.
I also realized that I will be taking a shoe tying 101 class immediately!
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