Life Coach

Well, I completed the 10 mile trail run at Milford State Park today.  Just finishing was a huge accomplishment considering I was ready to throw in the towel during the first half of the race. It was hot....there were hills, followed by more hills, then it was hot and how could I forget the wonderful following of the largest gang of knats to inhabit Geary County who were swarming around my head?  If you can't tell, perhaps I was not in the best frame of mind. :)

I tried to do everything I could to get out of my funk. I was even thinking "I CANNOT blog that quit!" But as we closed in on the the trail head where the 10K course seperated from the 10 mile run...nothing was working. Even the prospect of a big fat DNF next to my name on the finishing times wasn't deturing me from turning off the trail on the nearest road I could find and heading back to the van.

The ONLY reason I kept going was because of Chad and his encouragment. He could have been at least a mile (at least...probably more) ahead of me. But he wasn't, he kept encouraging me, coaching me through the terrain and the hills that just kept coming. The second half of the 10 mile trail run went much better than the first 5 miles, but even in the last mile when it was 85 degrees and I came the closest to puking on a course then I have ever come...Chad was urging me forward. Even after he fell on the course at mile 7, he popped right back up and showed me a few miles later that he was bleeding. Would I have acted like that was no big deal like that? I think we all know the answer to that question! :)

We finished the race together. And even though we both needed to run extra milage...we agreed that a trail run counted as far more than the miles we had logged. Chad also did another brick after this race, riding his new bike (I'll blog more about this later) 29 miles home. AMAZING!!!

So thank you to my wonderful husband...who also became my trail running life coach for two hours this morning. I only finished because of you!