Persistence
March 28, 2008
As often happens, when I start feeling an injury take hold (which luckily for me, isn’t very often) I slip into a mini-state of denial. I begin to feel as if I don’t talk about it, the problem seems farther away, less present somehow. This would explain my lack of updating my training blog since a few weeks back…
I took the above picture on my last long Sunday run on March 23rd. I run by this boulder, and while you can’t really tell from the picture, it is huge. It’s this massive, gigantic thing that is actually banked against the little hill – or maybe it actually created the hill – and the trail runs over it.
Seeing this drop-shaped hole, carved out by drops of rain sliding down the leaves of the great tree next to the boulder, really gives me cause to stop and take stock of what persistence really means. Sometimes you feel like you are getting nowhere, and that all your efforts amount to nothing, or to not much. But then, if you are able to imagine the difference all your hard work and sacrifice could make, do make…well, I imagine that this shallow pool was many, many years in the making, and that to the naked eye in the beginning it seemed rather like nothing at all.
So I need to remember that these small set-backs, while they seem terribly frustrating and somewhat devastating to my training, are really nothing in the greater scheme of things. They also help to push me to take control of my training, and not let my training control me.
