keep going

I was in the last few minutes of what was easily one of the most demoralizing training runs I've had in a long time. Then I got a little help from a stranger.

I had mapped a route that would take me up the same last 2 miles of the La Jolla Half Marathon that I've registered for this coming weekend. I've worked in La Jolla for nearly 5 years now. I know the terrain. There are no surprises. But after running 10 minutes in zone 2 followed immediately by 10 minutes in zone 4 I found myself at the base of the last hill of the race course, this should have been run at zone 3 to finish off the workout. key words = 'should have'. I've never run up this particular residential hill and I've never done it after a zone 4 effort (you might recall zone 4 is the vomit zone). Instead of dialing it down to zone 3, I stopped. I bent over and wanted to vomit. I paused once or twice more after resuming before finishing out the run, but felt the workout was a failure.

I jogged (pronounced w/ a soft J just like La Jolla) down Prospect drenched in sweat and drowning in self loathing when I passed a man sitting on a bench w/ his son. He couldn't have been more than four, and without prompting he encouraged me to 'keep going!'

The kid wasn't a spectator at a race, just a kid I ran by. It made me realize that people are watching. And they don't want you to fail. They don't want you to trip and fall on your face. What they want is for you to succeed. They want to be inspired. I'm going to try and remember that when I feel like I don't have anything left and keep going.