I knew it was going to be difficult, but what lie ahead, was much more than a physical challenge.

I am training for a ½ marathon; the same race I had to back out of last year because of an injury. I never got to see it through and it took me about six months to fully heal before I could even start running again. It’s been a triumphant return.

With the training program I’m using, each week there are a series of different runs; speed, recovery, and distance. Today was distance; a 10K (6.21 miles). This was the longest distance I’ve run in quite a while, actually…since the day of my injury. I was nervous about it and almost didn’t do it.

To save you a play-by-play on the entire run, I will jump to the recurring issue I had. I kept wanting to stop. Along the route, about every mile or so, I wanted to rest in the shade. Notice I said, “wanted to.” I didn’t [physically] need to stop; I wasn’t experiencing pain, soreness, or shortness of breath. Sure, I was hot, sweaty, and a bit drained going up the hills, but overall, I felt pretty great, physically.

I couldn’t figure out why I didn’t keep running. I’d stop, pull over into the shade, have a sip of water, feel defeated, and then continue on. I was determined to finish the whole 10K and at about mile four, I gave up the notion that I had to do it within a certain period of time. I knew I at least, just wanted to finish.

So, I did it! I got home, with a [running] time of 1:11 minutes.

Okay, so what was my HUGE takeaway from this today? I realized I truly had let go of that conditioned version of me who would’ve ONLY focused on what a failure the run had been just because I stopped so many times.

But the version of me now, who is steeped in self-love, was more curious about the reason for stopping than the quest to beat myself up over it.

I decided to gain even more clarity of what happened for me today so through reflection, I thought about my run and broke it up into 3 categories. See image below.

As you can see, the “Did well” and “Accepted” categories outweigh the “Improvement” category and even those notes aren’t negative, just areas that need more focus.

You might be thinking, “You got out there, you ran six miles, I see nothing bad here”; however, my message isn’t meant to invite comparison, but rather to encourage introspection.

What is YOUR goal you’ve set for yourself, yet maybe you didn’t do it exactly the way you planned, or the way others think you should have done it? What’s that situation in your life where you can afford yourself a bit of grace for making forward progress, no matter how sloppy it may feel?  

𝑯𝒂𝒗𝒆 𝒂 𝒃𝒆𝒂𝒖𝒕𝒊𝒇𝒖𝒍 𝒘𝒆𝒆𝒌! 𝑷𝒍𝒆𝒂𝒔𝒆 𝒇𝒆𝒆𝒍 𝒇𝒓𝒆𝒆 𝒕𝒐 𝒔𝒉𝒂𝒓𝒆 𝒕𝒉𝒊𝒔 𝒘𝒊𝒕𝒉 𝒂𝒏𝒚𝒐𝒏𝒆 𝒚𝒐𝒖 𝒇𝒆𝒆𝒍 𝒄𝒐𝒖𝒍𝒅 𝒃𝒆𝒏𝒆𝒇𝒊𝒕 𝒇𝒓𝒐𝒎 𝒊𝒕. 𝑭𝒐𝒓𝒘𝒂𝒓𝒅 𝒐𝒓 𝒄𝒐𝒑𝒚 𝒂𝒏𝒅 𝒑𝒂𝒔𝒕𝒆 𝒕𝒉𝒊𝒔 𝒍𝒊𝒏𝒌 𝒇𝒐𝒓 𝒕𝒉𝒆𝒎 𝒕𝒐 𝒋𝒐𝒊𝒏: https://www.liveandleadwell.org/wellness-note-1

With Love,
Mary

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