When half the dis­tance is good enough.

The hope

After we fin­ished a won­der­ful shrimp and risotto din­ner this evening, my wife said, “You should go to the gym tonight.” I was feel­ing rather full, but it was my turn to work out — and I was excited to add some mileage to my Run 48 States endeavor. So I changed into my run­ning clothes, and off to the gym I went.

My plan was to run an easy 10K. I didn’t want to push it after din­ner, but I really did want to start rack­ing up some miles.

The real­ity

But once I started, my “easy” pace didn’t feel so easy. I told myself that after a mile the din­ner would set­tle and I’d feel bet­ter. A mile passed and then I told myself that after two miles I’d feel better.

The sec­ond mile was harder than the first. By 2 ¹⁄₂ I was just hop­ing to be able to make a 5K. I finally did make 5K (barely), and then I had to stop.

At first I was really disappointed.

Dis­ap­pointed that I didn’t run the whole dis­tance. Dis­ap­pointed that I ran 5K at such a slow pace. Dis­ap­pointed that I felt so tired and spent.

But what was my alter­na­tive? To not have run at all?

The real­iza­tion

Some­times any run is bet­ter than no run. A slow 3.1 miles is bet­ter than 0 miles. 300 calo­ries burned is bet­ter than 0 calo­ries burned. And try­ing and mak­ing an effort is bet­ter than not try­ing at all.

So what if I didn’t run 10K? I ran. And it wore me out. And then I lis­tened to my body and stopped.

There’s noth­ing wrong with that — and I got home in time to help put the kids to bed.

That’s good enough. In fact, that’s great!

2 Comments

• 
  RunAddicts January 10, 2010 at 6:20 pm

  Hi, I believe you learned the great truth about run­ning, and that there’s a lot of sat­is­fac­tion in “just doing it”. It’s not all about the time, dis­tance or speed. You can say you went run­ning, some­how, there’s a lot of sat­is­fac­tion in that!
  • 
    Evhen January 10, 2010 at 9:21 pm

    Exactly. Thanks for the com­ment — and nice site!