Discovering we still have work to do is something to celebrate

​Several months ago, my friend Solomon told me he'd signed up for a local 24-hour race. In my enthusiasm to keep up with his endurance feats, which are many, I too signed up for the race. There was little about my preparation at that point - or even after - that said I was ready for that. But still, I was in the race.

As race day drew nearer, I narrowed my goals to two. I wanted to run further than I ever had - 37 miles. And I wanted to be on my feet moving longer into an event than I'd ever lasted - 13 1/2 hours.

About 8 hours and 24 miles into the race, I knew those goals weren't going to happen. The previous 3.4 mile loop had been a battle to get through.

During a virtual a pre-race briefing earlier in the week, the race director said, before you decide to "tap out" of the race, take a minute, sit down, rest, gather your thoughts a bit - then make the decision to keep going or not.

That's what I did.

And in that rest, I talked myself into one more loop.

About a mile into that loop, I wondered what on earth I'd just done. Why was I back out here? At this point I was walking. Maybe not even walking - I'm not sure what the pace and gait look like the level leading up to the walking category; it's possible that level is what I was really doing.

Then my friend Corinne came along. She said we're going to get through this loop.

We laughed at life. We laughed at our own insanity for being out there. We laughed at the other insane people who went running by us. We laughed and we laughed.

And all the while, we kept going...

During THAT loop, Corinne somehow convinced me I had ONE MORE loop in me. I'm not sure how; even beneath the laughter I knew the loop we'd just finished was a desperate act of survival - not an indication I had plenty more where that came from.

But I sat. I rested. I thought about it. I knew finishing one more loop wouldn't get me either of my goals. I also knew, though, that one more would get me to the 50K milestone. A milestone I'd only reached 3 other times in my running journey.

I got up. I headed out. At this point I was more limp than walk. All I kept thinking was "action - thoughts - feelings". Our actions control our thoughts. Our thoughts control our feelings. If I let that process get reveresed on me in this moment, I was never going to finish this one more loop.

I was literally out there for over an hour - in my head - repeating: action - step - action - step - action - step.... Until I'd eventually taken enough action and enough steps to finish the loop.

I knew at that point I had no more one more loop in me. There was nothing left.

The important point is sitting here this morning, I still know I didn't have one more in me. I left it all out there.

And the beautiful thing is - the thing that has me excited this morning - is I know I still have work to do.

Because on the other side of an outcome like Saturday, there are two revelations. We either come to believe we can never do what we'd set out to do. Or, we can conclude, we have some work to do to get there.

When the conclusion is the latter - Monday is something to look forward to.

This morning I'm realizing I didn't pull off what I wanted to pull off because I'm wasn't capable of it. I didn't pull it off because I wasn't prepared to pull it off.

There's something energizing about knowing what stands between you and your goal is more work - because we are all capable of work. We aren't all capable of pulling off the feats someone else pulls off. But we are ALL capable of work.

When you still have the ability to put in the work, that's something to celebrate. In fact, I think it's the only way of preventing the feeling of sitting in a chair realizing you haven't put in enough of it.