A Year of DNS

I decided not to pursue Limberlost this year. I wanted to go and in retrospect I should have gone but I didn't. Perhaps it was some low self-esteem brought on by the hot weather and my inability to adapt to training in the humidity. Perhaps it was the thought of a race without much of my core group in attendance to rally me on. Most likely it was memories of last year's race that was the icing on the proverbial cake.

Limberlost will continue to be my "white whale" and next year, I will succeed at it. One way or another!

My ultimate goal this year was the 24 hour race at Dirty Girls. I love this race and I was mentally so pumped up for it. Everyone in the running community who I know and love will be there racing. I was going to bring my boys and they were already talking about watching me meet my ultimate goal.

However, like three of my planned races this year, Dirty Girls is not going to happen either. I found out about two weeks ago that my youngest son's baseball playoff weekend is the same as Dirty Girls. I have to admit, I actually thought for a split second of handing him to his father for the weekend and still doing the race. But as I said, it was a split second of a personal emotional response. Of course I'm not going to miss my son's play off weekend! He's worked so hard with the rest of his team since May and I want to see him succeed!

I've been lucky in the past few years because none of my kids' activities have overlapped one of my races. I knew eventually it would happen but I couldn't have imagined that it would happen over one of my "starred" races. Yes, it does sting a bit but I'm human. As I've told the kids countless times, "You're O.K. Just shake it off and move on".

This will be number four "Did Not Start" race for the year. Not quite how I was expecting my year to go. But that's o.k. I'm just going to shake it off and move on and continue to train. Constant forward motion.