The Courage Not to Quit

I trained pretty consistently for the Vancouver Half-Marathon last year, and I felt I was ready to run it, albeit at a pretty slow pace. Then a series of business trips interfered with my training schedule and I was away the day of the run. Inexplicably, I decided I would run in the Scotiabank Half-Marathon, but didn't get back into my training routine at all. It's a self-sabotage thing I have, I think, where I purposely don't really try to do something, so that when I don't do well, I have an excuse. It's easier to recognize in hindsight, however - last spring I thought it was perfectly normal that I was hardly doing any running! In the end I decided to do the run anyways, if only to spite myself.

Come race day I was understandably nervous, seeing all these sleek running creatures milling around, just waiting for the gun to go off to send them half-way across Vancouver...then I found a group of middle-aged women who were talking about giving themselves a "Courage Not to Quit" award, if they stayed on the course to the bitter end. That's me, I thought. I'll just keep repeating that in my mind over and over to myself.

I didn't do very well in that race. It was under 3 hours, but I don't think by very much. I walked a lot more than I wanted to, and than I had in training runs, but strangely enough, not once throughout the whole race did I have to remind myself about the courage not to quit. It never even once occurred to me. So that was something I learned about myself. Hopefully it holds true when the number of kilometres is double and the sun is sweltering overhead! At least I will have the confidence of being well-trained this time and be on the lookout for any self-sabotage!