Back on My Feet

Last week, I replaced a 3+1 (Wed/Thu) with a single 4 miler on Wed. It was not my intention, but at 5:30am Wednesday morning, circling up with Back on My Feet, I encountered the same two choices I usually do during my BOMF outings: run 4 miles with one of our more veteran members, or walk two miles with some of the newer guys. Up until last week, that choice was easy: I was never prepared to run 4 and almost always took to walking 2, sometimes trying to encourage whoever I was walking with to intersperse the walks with half-block jogs. Now that I'm training, I needed to run three that day, leading the way to the choice less chosen.

Most of our resident members don't have a particular running plan unless they're training for a race, but two of our guys are of the model sort and will run the longest distance we give them each day. So although the thought of 4 miles wasn't appealing, I had the confidence of knowing I had completed a 5-miler the weekend before so what the hell, right?

Well it wasn't so easy: his pace was a touch faster than mine, close enough to my pace to keep me prodding along but fast enough to make me want to cut the run short at each passing block. Not to mention the constant nagging in my stomach from the two slices of pizza I had devoured for dinner the night before. But during those four miles, I also reunited with the beauty of a good run -- if you push yourself past your comfort zone, you learn and discover that you're stronger than you think you are, and all those thoughts of "can't do it's," "don't want to's," etc... eventually fall by the wayside. I can't express how proud I am of these few members who are blazing this path and winning the match against self-doubt & lethargy every time they hit the pavement. Much better than I'm often able to do.

Here, blurry picture of our team: