sashayrae:

Although she feels she didn’t meet any of her super secret personal goals and wants to pretend today didn’t happen - I couldn’t think of a better way to spend my Sunday than screaming and cheering for each step of her 26.2 miles.

Hero status.

MCM 2011 in the bag.

Well, I survived my first marathon miraculously without shedding any tears.

Barely.

It went about as poorly as it possibly could have.

I spent as long as I could giving myself pep talks and willing my body to keep running.  And when things started to go terribly downhill I spent the next 10ish miles wondering 

“Why me?”

“Why now?”

“This is so unfair.”

“How can this be happening?”

I’ll be honest. It’s not just that I wanted to forget that yesterday ever happened.  And it’s not just that I didn’t come anywhere in the vicinity of my goals.  It’s that yesterday was one of the biggest disappointments I’ve ever had in my life.

Every step after mile 5 exponentially became a bigger and bigger disappointment. 

Somewhere near the end, when basically all the wheels had fallen off and all hell had broken loose, I just kept thinking over and over again “this is one of the single most disappointing things I’ve ever gone through.  I haven’t been this disappointed about anything for longer than I can even remember.  I can’t even think of the last time in my life I felt like this.”

And right then as I was thinking about how terribly unfortunate the day’s turn of events was it dawned on me that, hand to God,  this WAS one of the single most disappointing moments of my life.

The marathon becoming a shit-show was one of my life’s biggest disappointments?  How lucky am I?  How unbelievably blessed am I that this is near as bad as I’ve ever had it?

Acknowledging the thousands upon thousands of blessings in my life did not make yesterday any less of a disappointment.  But it certainly gave me a lot of perspective and made the disappointment much easier to handle.

And while somewhere near the middle third of the struggle marathon I kept thinking about how I didn’t want to see anyone or talk to anybody when it was over by the time I reached the finish line I was so happy to see my family.  Because they are my biggest blessing.