Boldly running where I've never gone before

So, I’m sitting on the sofa today with a cup of hot tea and a box of Kleenex when it occurs to me how eerily similar this scene is to another in recent memory.  It was 1997 and I had been studying for the med school admission test for months on end while attending college full time and working night shifts at a law firm.  A good score on that test was one key to the door of my future, and I devoted myself to my studies with a dedication befitting its gravity.  Whether reading on the El train, walking the floors at home with flash cards late into the night, or poring over books kept on the toilet tank, I studied like it was my religion.  About a week before the exam, I came down with a snotslinger of a cold like I’d never had before.  I remember showing up at the testing center feeling frail and depleted, toting my bag of Hall’s drops and box of tissues with a heart full of hope and a prayer on my lips.  Hacking and wheezing my way through the 6 hour exam, I figured it was both rotten luck and  a coincidence as rare as a lightning strike.

Yet here I am again.  After pounding the pavement month after month preparing for the Berlin marathon, I am sidelined at the eleventh hour with another ridiculous rhinovirus.  I needed to be running this past week instead of wondering why I was tired and all my bones hurt.  I would have loved sprinting along through this delightfully cool weather instead of shooting free throws at a wastebasket with crumpled up Kleenex.  And I would so much rather be writing about how race ready I feel at this moment instead of yet another angsty post rife with real or perceived inadequacies.   But we are where we are and there’s no escaping reality.

So this is how I’m going to handle it.

Unlike the last time I found myself in this situation, my future does not hinge on what will take place over the next few days or miles.  Nothing significant will happen if my running sucks.  In fact, no one will even care.  I haven’t constructed dreams and aspirations around a certain outcome and nobody is depending upon my success.  Self-image could take a temporary dive, but it wouldn’t be the first time I was less than thrilled with myself.  I’ll get over it.  And considering the fact that I got talked into doing the marathon in the first place, it is beyond illogical to give the end result undue importance.  Therefore I am going to quit worrying about it and let the chips fall where they may.

This may very well be the first time I’ve talked sense to myself in about 6 months.  Fascinating.