Back to the beginning

April 18th, 2009 was only a year ago, but it feels like a lifetime ago.  My living situation has changed, my job has changed (twice actually), even my car has changed.  While the same person on the outside (albeit a bit skinnier), the person inside has changed dramatically.  It’s interesting how much can happen in a year..  I think this to myself and I toe up the starting line at the Silver Spring Earth Day 5k this past Sunday morning.

A year before I was at the same starting line (ok, they moved the starting line to different street, but just indulge me anyways).   I had never been in a race before that day and I had no idea what to expect.  I had just begun my journey towards becoming a triathlete and I hadn’t a clue as to what lay ahead of me.

It may sound silly to you, because it does to me a bit, but I wasn’t sure if I could even finish this 5k race.  What if I had picked the wrong sport to get myself involved in?   I mean, I’m not a runner.  Just look at me!  I was built for football or maybe something like hockey.   What if I couldn’t do it?  Would I quit halfway through the race and subsequently throw in the towel on the rest of this silly quest to become not just a runner, but a triathlete?

But then I remembered something I heard once.  Don’t ask me where, probably a movie or something.  But it went something like this:  “Don’t be afraid of quitting.  Be afraid of finishing.”

I didn’t know what that meant until just then.  But like most moments of clarity, it came to me right then when it was supposed to.  And it means just this; Quitting is easy.  It’s simple to pack it in and head home.  Hell, you can probably even tell people you did it and they’d believe you.  You might even get out of there in enough time to grab an Egg McMuffin on the way home.

But if you finish, it means you can accomplish this, and who knows much more.   It’s frightening when you think about it because we never know what were capable of until we put ourselves to test.  If we don’t quit the results are usually surprising and sometimes scary.

If I finished the 5k then I could train for, and finish a 10k.  Then a triathlon.  Maybe an olympic distance triathlon.  And maybe next year I’ll be doing a few triathlons and maybe even an ultramarathon or two….  Ok, maybe I didn’t think that far ahead.  But I decided that it was okay to finish.  And though the rest of my journey was still unclear, for the next 30 minutes or so I only had one mission, and that was to not quit.

So I ran that 5k.  And I while I was out of breath at the end and I had to walk a few times, I finished.  And that one race, that took me almost 28 minutes, set everything in motion that is happening today….

Back to this past Sunday.  I ran pretty well, though I haven’t been training for short distance races, and manage to knock almost 3 minutes off my time last year.  I feel good through the whole race and think that I could probably even gone a bit faster.

After I finish the race I stop to turn around see people finishing behind me.   I wonder how many of these people are finishing their first race.   How many doubted their finish earlier this morning?  I want to go back and give them all fives but I think better of it.

Instead, I  turn to walk away and think of all the first steps that happened here today and it makes me smile.

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