There is a moment in Star Wars when Luke and Han are shooting down TIE Fighters and Luke shoots one down and cheers. "I got one!" Han then congratulates him, but instucts him to "not get cocky." Well yesterday I "got one". I had a great day running and I thought that nothing could stand in my way. What I needed was a little inner Han to tell me not to get cocky, because today was VERY difficult and I did a terrible job.
At the start of the run, my calf muscles were extremely tight. This would normally be bad news for a runner who was in shape, but oddly, it felt good to have this pain. It showed that I was beginning to run quite a bit and start to feel like I was in shape. I was throwing my muscles into pain. I am on the cusp of being regular. This was the only good news on the run. It hurt. The run pretty much hurt. But I remember another scene from another film.
In One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, Jack Nicholson's characters bets the rest of the mental hospital that he could lift a sink, throw it out the window, and escape. He tried to do it and failed. Everyone was staring at him when he finally looked across the crowd and said, "What? At least I tried." As runners, it is difficult to have a good day every day. Sometimeswe run slow. We feel like shit. And we spend the entire run praying that it was over. But you need to say to yourself, "At least I went out there. At least I tried." It's sometimes the best victory a runner can afford.
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