Permission to fail

The original title for this post was gonna be, Monday Madness: Mindless Moronic Miles. That's because after five and a half miles in Roscoe Ewing Park with my running companions, Debbie Hicks and Shannon Barnes, our runner Dan found himself alone with nowhere to go except the track for enough additional miles to make it at least to double digits. 

Sometimes, Dan is able to gather himself together when his friends leave. Sometimes, he is able to eek out a not-so-bad run, whether on the boring old track or someplace else. This actually happened on Lester Rail Trail last Friday. The friends got done and left, and Dan managed to actually pick up the pace a little and complete a pretty-decent long run. Some days are good ones, others, not so much.

As he was trying hard to run in circles, it occurred to Dan that he was moving slower and slower, and that he was simply unable to get even as many as ten miles in this day. That would constitute a failure, for the distance was the main thing this time around. (The total ended up as nine.) It also occurred to Dan that once in a while, it's okay to have a stinker of a run. Failure happens.

The best a runner can do is to manage his or her failures. Manage them in such a way that they occur during runs that are less important than others. Others would include races and more important workouts. A stinker on a Monday morning training run isn't so concerning. So long as one bounces back. That's giving oneself permission to fail.

And bounce-back is Dan's middle name.