The Bright Side of Life

At one point in my late evening chat with Claressa the other night, we were talking about working out. Claressa has been walking regularly and recently started a couch to 5k program. She was talking about how hard it is to get out there and get the workouts done sometimes (especially living in triple digit temp Texas) and then said something to the effect of "You always talk about how great all of your runs are".

It's true. I do have mostly positive things to say about every run, but that doesn't mean that running for me is all rainbows and unicorns. It's not that I'm lying so that all of you will think that I am a bad ass. Claressa and I also talked about how one benign negative thought can metastasize in a millisecond and take us down. I think this why I always find the positive aspects in every run. Dwelling on how much I suck will cause me to quit. Again, I'm not lying. I'm just finding the full portion of the glass, and it does happen that on rare occasions I can't find one single good thing about a crappy ass workout.

Two recent examples of what could be considered, by many, to be bad runs that I coated in sugar? Last night I was suppose to do a long run of anything between 9 and 12 miles. Instead I only did 3. BUT I ran those three miles at an under 10min pace, my body moved fluidly, and my new shoes felt fantastic. For the first time in a long time, my feet weren't blistering at all! Another run that might not have been considered stellar by most was my recent 16 miler. The pace that I kept might make some runners so depressed that they would hang up their shoes forever. Instead, I was happy that my legs didn't give out and I came off that run not hating it. I came away feeling good and not completely dreading the inevitable 18. That's a win in my book.

So the moral of the story kids, is that no matter how bad YOU suck, somebody else sucks worse. And that somebody could be ME.

And here's a little bonus feature for you. Have you ever seen someone barefoot water ski? My dad has been doing it since I was a kid. He and my brother got our old boat running again and posted some short videos from their weekend.

First up is my 57 year old dad. Once upon a time, he would get out there in his wet suit and do some tumbles and tricks.

Next up, my 26 year old brother.

Bahahhahahaha!