There are awards?

An interesting thought came up in a conversation today.

In my 5K race on Saturday, I placed 662 out of 779 people. I was 51 out of 63 in my age division.

This got me to thinking...why do runners race?

I can't speak for all runners, but I can speak for myself (and we'll use the term 'runner' loosely here). I entered this race not to win the overall race or to win one of the three awards given in my age division. I entered this race to REACH A GOAL. I entered to cross it off my bucket list. I entered it as part of the overall goal to lose weight.

But most of all, I entered it to know that I could race a 5K.

So often, we hear that people only enter a competition to win. And when they don't win, they're disappointed.

Of course you're disappointed - you had no other reason to enter the race than to win. And when you come in 662 out of 779, you're going to be extremely disappointed. When you come in 4 out of 779, you'll be disappointed because you didn't receive a little trophy.

But if you enter the race to finish; if you enter it to reach a personal goal; if you enter it to take a step towards a bigger goal, then there is NO WAY you can be disappointed if you finish. And the best part? Even if you didn't finish, you still tried and made the effort. And I bet you learned something from it.

For all of you who don't think you can do something, or think that since you're not going to win, you're not going to play, I urge you to consider to think again. I told myself for years that I wasn't a runner and I finished my first 5K this past weekend.

Show the world what you're made of, and go out there and do it. Learn from it. And do it better the next time.

"No, maybe I can't win. Maybe the only thing I can do is just take everything he's got. But to beat me, he's going to have to kill me. And to kill me, he's gonna have to have the heart to stand in front of me. And to do that, he's got to be willing to die himself. I don't know if he's ready to do that. I don't know." - Rocky IV

Week Two – Days 2-5

You’ll notice there’s a big chunk of time missing from this blog. That would be because starting Monday, I had a sore throat. I started to wonder if I should run on Tuesday, and determined that since I was feeling fatigued, I wouldn’t.

That was probably a good decision, considering I ended up staying home on Wednesday. I slept late, napped through parts of the day and went to bed at 8:30pm. I ended up going back to work on Thursday, but came home after work to get some more rest.

So, to make up for this week, I will walk/jog today and then get back on the normal schedule Saturday and Sunday. I will probably “repeat” week two in my schedule, since I didn’t get to build up and sort of feel like I have to start over again.

One of the hardest things I’ve dealt with mentally since I’ve started this is that I’m typically an overachiever, and it’s hard for me not to be able to just do something right away. I have to keep reminding myself that I can’t just get up and run a 7 minute mile – it’s something I have to work up to. I’ll be able to do it when I’m ready. The hard part is that I won’t know I’m ready until I’m ready. I’m learning this lesson in the Couch to 5K and have realized that I can apply it to other things in my life. It’s been a valuable lesson, even in the short time I’ve been working on the program.