Face the Pain

I’m thinking about the time I completed my 2nd marathon. People have asked me over the years why I would do something so crazy, and I never really gave an answer. The answer? Well, I wanted to prove to myself that my mind was stronger than I believed.

I was a decent track athlete & had a lot of potential to be a really good D1 collegiate athlete, but I let self-doubt & the fear of pain & failure limit me, until I eventually gave up.

On the day I completed my 2nd marathon, I was so upset & hard on myself b/c I trained to finish in 5.5 hours, and finished an hour later than I wanted. It wasn’t until I saw the picture in my Runkeeper app that I remembered how far I’d come & how much I’d grown. I realized that I had absolutely NO reason to be upset or disappointed in my time.

About 2 wks before this race, my knee started to hurt. I rested, medicated, iced, prayed, everything. Then around mile 3-4 on race day, I knew my knee was done, but I wasn’t about to throw away 7 months of training, so I vowed to finish even if it meant me dragging my leg across the finish line.

There were medic stations every few miles, and it was recommended that I stop & get help, but my response was “if I stop, I know I won’t finish.” My phone died, my music died, so all I had were my thoughts, prayers, songs in my head, and my selfless cousin who chose to stay with me the entire time. And drag my leg across the finish line, was exactly what I did.

This season taught me a whole new meaning to discipline & self-control. It taught me to push past fear & gut wrenching pain to achieve the goal. It taught me that moving forward while limping is better than giving up. It taught me to stay the course when every single thing in my body, heart, and mind were saying to stop. That was the logical thing to do… but there really is no logic to faith. 😏 #gladiator