Amazing life lesson

Dear Ken,

On my last day to prepare before the half marathon, I learned a really incredible lesson.

I absolutely hate running on a treadmill. Spending what seems like an infinite amount of time running in place is dreadful. Leaving work close to the sun setting, I had no other choice. Running after dark is just too dangerous.

So what’s the lesson? It’s not that I was running and going nowhere, but it was the guy who ran next to me that caused me to reflect on life. Here’s what happened:

I was really running. It was about 45-minutes into my run on an incline of 2.0 and a speed of 6.0 when a guy approached the treadmill to the right of me. To his surprise, the treadmill had a “not in service” sign posted. To hide the embarrassment, he immediately went to the left of me – finding a very operable piece of equipment.

Watching Fox News, amazed at the smiles and triumphant attitudes of those 33 men in Chile who survived underground for 69 days, I was interrupted by a continuous thump. It was the dude to the left of me running for his life. Being curious, I glanced down at how fast he was running (because clearly he was keeping up too much noise). He was running at a speed of 7.4 on an incline of 0. By this time, I had been on the treadmill for about 45 minutes running at a nice pace – with energy left to burn.

Listening to the thumping noise was rather distracting. About 10 minutes into his run, I noticed the noise began to come to a halt. As he was exiting the treadmill, he said, “Wow, it looks like you’ve been running a good minute, and you’re still going … I’m exhausted.”

It wasn’t until he left that I began to contemplate what had occurred.

See – he ran about 10 minutes at a faster pace and a lower incline but got tired and gave up. Running slower, at a higher incline, I had enough strength to last way longer after he had left.

It hit me.

Often times in life, I look at the person next to me and see how fast they are excelling in their career, education or the like, and then I look back at myself and notice that I’m moving at a much slower pace. But in all honesty, the run taught me that it’s not how fast I go in life, but the fact that I am able to succeed at the level that I am on and endure until the finish.

I’m really looking forward to the race. I’m also looking forward to the next challenges in my life.

#RunningOn