It dawns on me that the MS River Marathon post may feel ungrateful or at the least graceless. It’s hard to capture a feeling of disappointment and struggle given “success” in placing at the event. Any success was more luck than anything as I felt like I scraped, scratched, and clawed my way through the mileage today. In the closing mile people encouraged me to “dig deep” and “push through.” These are the right things to say to encourage runners but I had already long ago dug deep and pushed through about as much as I could. I had nothing left. There was no reserve left, no secret stash of energy or speed. I felt… drained and defeated.
And I know that doesn’t make a lot of sense — I should be celebrating a placement in the standings, flying the proverbial “W” of Chicago Cubs fame. But this was a day that was a prison of quicksand mind games, of physically exhaustion that left me feeling incapable of celebrating.
But I don’t want to come across as sour grapes, particularly given a pretty good showing in the results. Nonetheless, there’s a feeling of “that should have gone a different way…”. And not necessarily in the timing or placement. But in the *feel* of the run.
It was a tough, tough day for me. Perhaps I should show a bit more grace at having succeeded and finished despite that. But my humanity is showing – irrationality and incongruities are part and parcel of the equation.
And right now the sum total works out to be a less than flattering portrait of me. Ah, well… tomorrow is another day. And tomorrow will bring another run. I’ll see how I feel then.
Yeesh… even this attempt to walk back the weird post has gone awry and awful.