Lessons from the Trail 5 - feelings can be deceiving

When I ran the Storm the Dam half marathon with Steve I felt great.  I had a good run.    We didn't have a garmin or a clock, we just ran.  I ran most of it, and was surprised at how fast the miles were ticking by.  This trail had mile markers every mile and 4 or 5 aid stations, which was awesome.  I would come across mile 1, mile 2, and so on and think how fast we had gotten there.  This rarely happens for me.

I had one bad mile, from 9-10 where we walked more of it (most of it) than I would have liked.  That mile 10 marker never seemed to materialize.  Eventually we passed it, and I got back on track and still felt pretty good.

I felt so good,  I was hoping for a better time than I had before.  I was quite disappointed to find out that I didn't have the time I wanted, it was actually slower than the last time I ran this trail when I felt like I was going to die and struggled and hated the whole race.

I was very discouraged by this.  How could I feel so good about the race and do so poorly?

I Corinthians 10:12 So, if you think you are standing firm, be careful that you don't fall!

Sometimes I think I have it all figure out.  I'm on track, know what's going on, what I'm doing and out of nowhere I fall into my own pile of me.  I did this last week.  Handled a situation poorly.  Really, not too poorly, I just didn't need to say anything and I did.  I also let one negative comment about something from someone who shouldn't be allowed to speak into my life (and I shouldn't allow it to have any weight) bother me more than the 3 positive comments about the very same thing from women I admire and love.  How does that happen?

I read Jon Acuff's blog, Stuff Christians Like and he talked about Larry David, the creator of Seinfeld.  He was at aYankees game and they showed his picture on the screen and 50,000 people cheered.  On the way to his car someone drove by and yelled "You suck, Larry".  That was the comment that mattered.  He said it's because 1 insult + 1000 compliments = 1 insult. 

Me.  I get in my way.  I think I'm standing, and then I'm backside down on the pavement wondering how the heck that happened. 

So I get up and try again. 

And after a while, I decided that the fact that I wasn't running as fast as I thought I was shouldn't matter.  I would just take it as a success, because it felt like one.