Today was supposed to be a three mile run. I was woken at 6am by the sound of fierce wind blowing through the neighborhood. I got up and looked out the window to see that it had been drizzling all night, and the wind and almost freezing air temp made running unpalatable. So I decided to go back to bed and just head into work. I had some other opportunities to run later in the day when things seems to have calmed down more in the weather department, but I ended up not getting it done.

So I ended up missing one of my workouts this week, and there’s two ways you can approach situations like this. One way is to admit defeat and decide that you must not be very dedicated if you can’t even pull a 3 miler out of your butt on a slightly cold day. You can beat yourself up and tell yourself that you might as well hang up this whole running thing. Because come on, the pro’s don’t sleep in when the going gets tough. It’s east to let a little defeat spiral out of control and become bigger than it really is.

Or you can take the more sane approach and admit that some days we just don’t have it in us like we thought we did. Some days we miss the mark and fail to do what we know we’re capable of doing. But that doesn’t mean that the next time we’re facing a tough run that we’re going to give up before we start. No, it means that you pull it back together and get the next run done, and then you put the missed opportunity behind you. It means that you keep plugging away at the bigger goal and know that you’re still going to achieve what you want to achieve even if every step isn’t perfect.

Saturday is 9 miles. It’s going to happen and it’s going to be tough, but it’s going to be amazing.