I had a 10K race this morning; a race that almost did not happen, for me anyway.  I had a million excuses running through my head.  My race partner (my daughter) has the flu, my back has been hurting for about a week, in the past two weeks I have only run four times and one of those was a race I did two weeks ago.  These are just a few of the things I was trying to use as excuses.

The excuses did not win and I did finish the race.  Here is what got me out there today.

At 5:45 am my alarm started buzzing; I hit the snooze alarm and laid there running all of the excuses through my head.  I thought to myself, “well I am just going to get up and at least start the coffee”.  I got up, turned on the coffee maker and put on a pot of water for my oatmeal; I knew at that point I was at least considering the race.

As I was getting out my mug and bowl, etc and waiting for the water I looked up and on top of the fridge I saw my Runner Box (you can Google that later if you do not know what it is).  I reached up and took it down to see what was left inside.  I pulled out a few things and gathered some paperwork still in there to throw it away when I noticed writing on the lid and on the lid was a quote – “The task ahead of you is never greater than the strength within you.”

And there it was; my decision.  How could I not run now?  My inner strength and desire to run was much stronger than any excuse I could put in front of myself.  I ate my oatmeal, had my half a cup of coffee, drank some water and took my vitamin.  Geared up; you know when you tie your shoelaces that is THE moment it all starts to feel absolutely right. And off I went to my race.

It was a good race and afterwards I rewarded myself with an awesome meal –

Tomorrow I will share some of my race “moments”; funny what the mind thinks about when you are running.

And to end I would like to say that today is the 1-year + 1-week anniversary of my last cigarette!