Hard to believe it’s already been a little over a month since I ran my first Half-Marathon! I remember signing up towards the beginning of the year with my two younger brothers and then the next morning staring at the confirmation email wondering to myself what the heck I’d just done.
Looking back at most of my life, I have for a lack of better terms just “coasted”. Everything typically has come relatively easy for any of my interests, if I found something challenging, I’d usually lose focus or drive and move on to learning something new unless there was an extremely strong urge to push through the challenges. I believe this is common behavior amongst most of us as it is natural for us to not want to face failure and I believe a lot of the culture today simply glosses over this topic. It appears to me that most are either disingenuous or just assume everyone can find the drive they need to succeed in their endeavors. Unfortunately, I’ve found that people don’t just one day find the willpower to accomplish something, there’s typically an underlying force that compounds with the many intricacies of life which awaken inside of you to push you to do better and make you want to become a better version of yourself. This underlying force I believe is called discipline.
Now for someone new to distance running I had a lot to learn and with having the typical engineering mindset, I wanted to create a solid plan while tracking as many metrics as possible! My brother recommended the Strava and Runna Apps which significantly impacted how I set up and tracked my training for the mini. Initially all I thought I’d need was a new set of running shoes, so that day after signing up I ran to my nearest sporting goods store and picked up a pair of Brooks Ghost 16’s. After my first run, I realized that getting a watch would be the next logical step in gear purchases if I really wanted to get better metrics. I ended up going with the Garmin Forerunner 165 Music and enjoyed it in combination with the Runna and Strava apps.
I’ll admit I thought I had a solid plan from Runna but after awhile I soon realized how difficult it can be to stay disciplined with how much of a time commitment running can be starting out when you are only running anywhere between a ten-to-fifteen-minute mile pace. Having a full-time job and raising a one-year-old with my wife while keeping up with our homestead was making it extremely difficult to stay committed to the plan!
To become more consistent in my training I started finding ways to include some of our family members on my runs. Iris, the youngest of our Australian Shepherds, enjoyed some of my early easy runs and eventually I purchased a running stroller so that I could include my son on my runs.
At some point in my training, I did something to my right knee and that was when I learned how important stretching is! I took a huge hit on my plan and didn’t run for almost two weeks, at this point I was worried I wouldn’t meet my target goal of being under two hours and decided to change my goal to being under two and a half hours and focus on just being able to run during the entire race. This is one of the many joys of life, getting to adapt to when things don’t go as planned.
Once healed, I slowly got back into my running plan and leading up the weekend prior to the mini I ran a 10k race with my son. I can’t say this enough but after becoming a father myself, I can’t help but respect all the fathers out there. Especially the ones who are present around their children. Running that 10k with my son was such a confidence booster and good practice run of running in a race.
Race day soon arrived and looking back at all the runs I had done prior paled in comparison to this. I was getting ready to run the longest distance I had ever run in my entire life! My wife, son, and mom were all gathered at the start to cheer us all on and although my brothers started on a different coral we were in this together and would soon meet each other at the finish line.
The start was incredible, I had never seen so many people gathered in a space like this before as we crossed the starting line I soon understood I had not prepared for having to weave around people. I started to notice that this was making me exert more energy and resorted to trying not to weave as much as possible. The first six miles I could see the sub-two-hour pacer out ahead of me and thought that I could possibly catch back up to them towards the end. I felt strong and leading into the speedway was such a huge boost of encouragement by all the supporters lined up along the road. Once I got out onto the speedway the sun was brutal on the blacktop but luckily it was a cool morning. Paying respects to the countless veterans on the golden mile was amazing and crossing the bricks will be a memory I’ll never forget because I knew if I was to get down and kiss them there’d be no way I’d be getting back up to finish the race!
It was at the seven-mile mark when things started to slow down for me, I had begun to hit my “wall” at mile ten and could no longer see the sub-two-hour pacer out ahead of me. At this point I recall things being much more somber and I watched as participants began to give up and start walking while others pushed their bodies harder to get closer to that finish line. I continued to push myself and keep myself running knowing that I’ll be meeting my two brothers and family at the finish line here soon. I turned a corner and began to cross the bridge over the White River and could see the finish line out in front of me. At that point I believed I could start to run a bit faster but soon felt a strange pain in my left leg and had to resort to just continuing at the slower pace that I had been running. Passing that finish line with a time of 2:22:47 and getting to rejoice in completing the longest run I’ve ever done with my brothers was one of the many rewarding things I’ve done in my life, and I couldn’t have done it without the conscious decision to stay disciplined.
Training as a new father taught me that discipline isn’t all about having more time, rather it’s about protecting the time you have and doing things with intention. This is one of the many reasons why I’m writing here as I find that by documenting my life experiences help me apply my energy towards continual improvement!
Philippians 4:13