On Chasing Rainbows

So this morning I went out jogging (Of course. It's Tuesday after all.). After that 1/2 marathon on Sunday I was too pissed off to remember to power off my ipod and garmin so batteries in both were dead this morning... which was fine because I was just jogging and sometimes it's good to listen to your own thoughts rather than Eminem. Except when your own thoughts are still on the pissy side and you're still allowing yourself to wallow in your own misery about what a shitty runner you are.

But really, it's been two days and I just need to snap myself out of this funk and let it go already so in the second mile of my run I tried to think of something positive... how about a positive experience I had this year while running? Yeah. Let's think about that. Let's see. Ok. Well, I PR'd the 10K at the Honolulu Triathlon by 2 minutes. That was a good run! And I PR'd the half marathon at Honu by 3 minutes. And I PR'd the marathon in an Ironman by 20 minutes. Hmmm. I think I see a trend. In all three triathlons that I actually cared about, I ran faster than ever before. 

Ah ha!

So then by like mile 3 of my run I was laughing at myself because when I look back at my running record this year, it's obvious that I'm training like a triathlete. Which is, um, what I asked my coach to help me do. And clearly he has done. So while I may suck at running open road races, my running off the bike has improved dramatically. Maybe in the past I could run a decent 5K, but that never translated over to holding it together in a longer triathlon... Until now...

By mile 4 I had convinced myself that I was not a shitty runner at all! And in all likelihood I'm going to have a new marathon PR when I cross the finish line in Kona in a few weeks! (Isn't it awesome how just a couple miles of running has this power to transform your mindset??) And just when I was daydreaming about how much of a PR my Kona marathon was indeed going to be, it started raining... but the sun was out... and a brilliant rainbow appeared... and I just knew it was all going to be okay.

I didn't have my camera with me on my run but I came home and found that my friend Carol-Lynn had taken this shot and posted it on Facebook. The end of that rainbow was pretty much at my house this morning. It was awesome.