At peace

With only 9 days to go before one of my past goals slips through my fingers as incomplete, I realized today that I was completely at peace with it.

It's not to say that I am happy with things that I set out to do, but cannot. I'm not letting myself off the hook, not setting a precedence, not accepting of failure, and not saying it'll never happen. 

I was about 27 when I started running, never thinking I'd be hooked. As the distances increased, from my first 5k, then 10k, half marathon, 30k... I thought it would be an amazing goal to run my first marathon at the age of 32, the age at which my dad ran his first, and only marathon. Well, in 9 days, I will be 33. Goal: FAIL.

But, it's not a total loss. If you don't know what happened the day I attempted to cross that goal off my to-do list, you can read about it here. I'm not sure that I'll ever write as emotional a post as I did that day, only hours later.  It was probably the best thing I did all day! The funny thing is, I read it, almost as if it's in the third person, as if I'm reading someone else's account of a race gone bad.

I learned a lot about myself that day, and unexpectedly, got a lot more than I could have asked for. Even without the right to call myself a marathoner, even without the finishers medal, bigger things happened. 

I learned that I can push through more pain that I'd ever like to feel again, for something I chose to do, willingly. I learned that I don't give up without a fight. I learned that while I do have a stubborn streak in me (read: walked, limped, hobbled, cried from when the pain set in at 8k, reaching 35.98k, when I finally turned off the Garmin, and sat on the curb, sobbing), I eventually come to my senses (read: stop before doing more permanent damage. 8 weeks off, including crutches, walking cast, lots of frustration. Would hate to know what the outcome would have been if I had continued, if I even could!)

After all this, and 9 days before failing at my goal, I'm at peace! There were days that I took it pretty hard, but I'm over that now. I've heard comments, but they don't sting quite as bad. I've taken the above lessons learned that day, and carried them forward in other parts of my life. 

I was forced into a pool, and onto a bike as part of recovery, and got bit by the tri bug hard. LOOK! I even placed 3rd in my AG in the Welland Try-a-Tri earlier this summer! Never being even close to this in a running only race, leave it to me to completely miss the awards ceremony, and have to get my bronze medal mailed to me!! It's been a fun, and interesting journey!  Wonder if I would even have ventured here, had it not been for the injury!

I've taken baby steps in the 'tri world' too, learned a lot, and have my goal race for the season coming up on Sept 5th, my very first Olympic distance triathlon. Let's hope the story ends differently this time, and perhaps for the next time I run the marathon distance. I'll never say never!