I easily had one of the worst runs this morning, in I don't know how long. My legs hurt, the effort seemed much harder than my pace indicated, and I was suffering, but why was I smiling so much? I have learned to embrace my suffering when running, and enjoy it. This was the kind of run that 2 months ago would have had me questioning whether or not I could complete another marathon, heck I was struggling with 6 miles, how in the world would I ever finish 26.2!? But not today, I knew it was bad, but instead of dreading it and hating it, I did the only thing I could do and kept putting one foot in front of the other, and accepted my suffering as just something I had to endure, heck it was an out and back course so I really had only 2 choices, I could walk back or I could run, running shortened the suffering considerably.
Running has a way of stripping you down to the bare essentials. You can't carry alot of additional baggage when you go for a run, you take whats necessary, shoes, shorts water maybe some food and thats it, you leave the rest behind. The same can be said for the mental aspect, you can't carry to much emotional baggage on your run either, running is a great way to think through a problem or a difficult decision that has to be made. But if your spending all your time fretting over how tough the run is you'll never solve the other bigger problems going on. In that respect running is a great metaphor for life, strip your self of all the unnecessary baggage, get down to the bare essentials (the rest really just weighs you down), and no matter how tough the going gets, just keep putting one foot in front of the other and eventually you will get where you need to go.
Remember...do today what others won't, so tomorrow you can do what others can't.
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