SOMEONE LIKE YOU...

Someone like you intimidates me. Words spoken by a woman attorney I work with who is preparing to run her first 5k tomorrow. I had to resist the urge to look behind me to see if maybe Deana Kastor or Paula Newby-Fraser had walked into the room, but I realized she was talking about lil 'ol me.

"Me?" I laughed. "Why?" still amused. "Because you do so much, you run all the time, and do all these races..." "Thanks, but..." and then I stopped myself. I didn't say what I was thinking "but I'm really slow; but I'm not that good; but anyone can do what I do." I decided not to verbalize my negatives and instead said, "Thanks, but I do it because its fun and keeps me in shape."

That was a big step for me. So you see, I'm getting better about not putting myself down, trying to stay positive on what I do, and looking at it as something fun to do instead of a contest.

Tomorrow I'll be doing 25k. My foot/ankle seems to be okay, just more of a strain than anything else this time, thankfully. I'm not going to stress about my pace, just try to plan it out so it ends up being successful, and not get disappointed no matter what my time is. 25k is not a run around the block. It will be a long day. I know that. I also know I am not racing it. I know I'll be out there with a lot of other people my pace or slower, so I'm going to enjoy the day. I'm going to treat it as two 10ks with a 5k cooldown. I'll use one of my "10k times" for the virtual race: 10k on the 10th and hopefully I can come up with a good race report.