Better Than Me

I’m not a fast runner.

I don’t know that I will ever be a fast runner – that I’ll be able to beat, or even match Nick’s pace.

When I ran track in high school it was pathetic. I ran the 1600 and the 3200. One mile and two miles. Never in the same meet; it would have killed me.

I hated track. I hated practice. I hated the meets. I came to dread both as only a further opportunity to embarrass myself. Oh the irony that I joined track to spend time with friends… and to become better at something I knew I struggled with…

source: How to Run Free

Finishing a race more than a full minute (sometimes two) after the other members of my heat – it was just that, embarrassing.

I sort of tried to improve. Something along the lines of “if I don’t actually try, I can’t actually fail.” But I did, I failed.

I failed myself.

And it has hung over me like a bad dream all this time.

I just told myself that I wasn’t a good runner, running wasn’t for me, I was good at other things.

And maybe these are true.

But the failure is in never trying to prove myself wrong.

I changed my thinking when I signed up for my first 5k and put in the time and miles to prepare. I finished that race in 32:30. An accomplishment – proud that I had done something that I’d been telling myself for years I wasn’t capable of.

Nick finished the same race in 20:07. So I kicked myself again for being 12 minutes slower.

Now I am training for a sprint distance triathlon. A 1/2 mile swim, 12 mile bike and a 3 mile run.

I run three to four days a week in preparation and have been doing so for about two months.

And yesterday, the truth about running has finally come to me.

All I have to do – all I ever need to do – all I need to strive for – is to be better than ME.

Better than I was when I ran track – both a better person and a better runner.

I am both.

And I am still working to be better than me. A better runner than the me of yesterday, even a better runner than the me of the last interval, better than the me that wants to stop right here.

(photo from a run a few weeks ago at the Ogden River Parkway)

On my run yesterday I played a game. I had three sets of run 10 min walk 5 min. I will typically run the the first half of the sets on the OUTBOUND and return on the latter half to my starting point.

Yesterday, I reconsidered this and instead I ran the same 1 mile and change three times over – each time trying to beat my previous distance in the same amount of time.

For instance: I started my first ten minute run at a foot bridge. I ran ten minutes, then walked five, turned around to run my next ten minutes. The goal was to be back to the bridge before the ten minutes ran out. In my ten minute run back to the bridge I covered the same distance that I had run and walked in the previous fifteen minutes.

I beat my own self.

And that’s the only person I’m competing with.

source: I Dream of Running