Glass half-full

Is your glass half-empty or half-full?

It’s been a veritable petri dish in our apartment with Mr. Cane fighting dengue fever and my fighting bronchitis. With the team opener on Sunday at The Cherry Tree 10-miler, I wasn’t sure until race day that I would actually race. What I was sure of is racing once I stepped on the line. I was NOT going to line up and then pull out or make the excuse that I wasn’t well.

I needed to come to terms with all the excuses before stepping on the line:

I have bronchitis. My time will be slow.

I am on antibiotics. My time will be slow

I haven’t done a real workout this week. My time will be slow.

My head isn’t in it. My time will be slow.

I just ran a block to pick up my number and I am gasping for air. How can I run 10 miles? Uhm, slowly.

Here’s every reason why it was great to race today even though it wasn't a great race:

I have bronchitis. This was reason enough to be slow, so there was no pressure.

I am on meds. It’s kind of like EPO. (okay, not really)

Being sick gave me a taper I wouldn’t have gotten otherwise.

I was so relaxed, I forgot about the watch, just listened to my body, and ran a negative split by about 80 seconds.

I got mad love and bada$$ points for being out there while hacking up a lung.

I continued the streak of bringing home hardware from all my races (Yes, imagine that a 7:01 pace was actually 2^nd in AG. Go figure. Old is good.)
Hopefully, the effort jump-started my fitness for the season.

I felt really positive out there and was cheering on my competitors. So much nicer to want to pull people than crush them. (Let’s not get crazy though. I wanted to pull them in behind me.)

I heart Brooklyn and non-NYRR races.

This reminded me that how I feel before the race is little indication of how it will go.

I got to bask in the glory of all my teammates running solid times and the camaraderie of it all.

Lastly, I went out on date night (thank you Alex Nimetz!) and not once did racing come up. Had I pulled out, I am sure I would have been unbearable. And so a good day and night were had by all.

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Nice race. I would have liked to have been out there with you (if I had been less exhausted, better trained and it had been about freezing). Ha ha. Remember the glass is always half full and its always half empty. It's about which half you focus on.

Posted by: ek | Feb 21, 2011 at 09:20 AM