Andrew had work and I somehow managed to be five minutes early to church with all three kids.  This was a first.

Church went really well too… Skye sat on Knox’s lap for a while and then colored.  I actually heard what the speakers were saying for the first time in a while;)

We decorated gingerbread houses.

And then our families came over to celebrate Skye’s birthday!

Chicken Cream Cheese Chili, Sweet Kale Salad (from Costco), grapes and Rhodes rolls for dinner.

And more cake.

My dad going through my nephew’s texts to the the girl he likes hahaha:

And Skye loves looking at ducks with my mom on her phone.

Some fun news:  Andrew just got hired for a new job!  His last position completely understands him moving to a different area because it will help him to continue his path towards going to NP school.  He will now be working in the Cardiovascular ICU and he is really excited about it!

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I’m not an expert about a lot of things in life but I think I can say that I officially am an expert (and I know a lot of you reading are also because that’s just how running goes;) on having a bad race ha.   I wanted to share some of the things that helped me to keep moving forward.  With this post I’m not talking about races where you are injured or if finishing the race is going to effect your health negatively… I’m just talking about when things go terrible in a race and your goal goes from a specific time to just making it to the finish line alive.

I had a mini breakdown at this point in the race because I just felt so bad when I saw Andrew that he had sacrificed so much for me to get to this race and I knew how off I felt and that it wasn’t happening.  BUT of course he does all of that because he loves me, not for a specific time on the clock:)

*I remember thinking this below at CIM when I kept seeing perfect opportunities for me to step off of the course and sit on the curb and cry.  I thought about the fact that I had trained hard to see the finish line, I had traveled and left my kids to be there, I had put my heart into this race and so I wasn’t going to come THIS far to only come THIS far.  I was going to come this far to get to the finish line.

*I think this applies to every race BUT especially to when you are hurting.  Make the tiniest goals on the planet.  During CIM I remember just thinking about how all I had to do was make it to Andrew, or make it until my watch beeped again or to even just make it the next quarter mile (hence why I lapped my watch at the end with a quarter of a mile because that was all I could take at a time)!

*READJUST.  Switch your thinking from hitting exact paces to just doing what you need to do to stay in the game.  Leading up to CIM I am pretty sure I almost wrote 6:16 in permanent marker on my forehead because I was so consumed by that number but after I got to the half and realized that how I felt was NOT changing and that it was just a really bad day, I readjusted.  I settled into different paces and adapted to the new plan of finishing.

*Ask yourself honestly, ‘Am I doing the best I can in the moment?”  Every single time I asked myself that during CIM I could answer yes.  I was feeling really dizzy and just knew that what I was doing was my absolute best.  We don’t go to races to prove something to the world with our times, we go there to give our absolute best that day.  I was doing that and if you can do that during a race that is going bad for you, then you are absolutely succeeding.

*I reminded myself there is always another race.  Now CIM was kind of dramatic… AHHH I HAVE ONE CHANCE TO OTQ before they probably lower the qualification time… BUT I’ve already found some new goals/ideas that really excite me.  Goals that make my heart beat fast and my palms sweaty.  Sure CIM was a huge race for me but there is more and more out there that I can do and work towards!  It’s never the end of the road for us!

*Remember that you aren’t alone in this and we are all here cheering for you.  For a minute after CIM I felt like I must surely be the only person to have made a big goal and fallen short of it by a lot but after posting about it on social media I was quickly reminded by so many of you that YOU GET IT.  We all get it.

*Try to absorb any energy you can from around you.  I remember seeing Jen at around mile 20.5 and thinking about how I was going to absorb the energy she was sending me and use that to finish the dang race.

*Think about it this way… it’s pretty much guaranteed that you are going to have some bad races leading up to your breakthrough race and so you are just getting that out of the way for you to really have an incredible race soon!

*I kept telling myself over and over again that quitting wasn’t an option (remember, no injury or major health concerns) and so I just needed to come up with other options because jumping on that bus wasn’t going to be how my CIM story ended that day.  Become the world’s best problem solver.

*It was so easy to just drown myself in sadness during CIM and that is completely normal to feel sad when you work so hard towards a goal and it doesn’t happen.  Sadness wasn’t going to get me to the finish line so I kept choosing gratitude instead.  I chose to be grateful for the fact that I was there and healthy.  I chose to be grateful for the fact my shoulders weren’t hurting (because pretty much everything else was) etc. etc.

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I’d love to hear from you about different ways that you have powered through a bad race in the past?!

Which race has been the absolute hardest for you?

Anyone start a new job recently?

What’s your run today?