The Boston Marathon
Good luck to the runners next Monday! | 2 min read
Next Monday is the Boston Marathon.
In 2018, I finally got to run it. I was so excited. Then, a week before the race, I saw the forecast:
Rain.
I was crushed. Here’s what that next week looked like:
- Checking the weather obsessively, hoping the forecast would change
- Thinking how unfair it was after training so well
- Feeling stressed and disconnected to everything else going on that week
I doubted the race before it even started.
Despite all my worrying, you know what happened on race day?
It POURED–nonstop for all 26.2 miles. It was cold, with 25 mph headwinds. Hail at the end was the icing on the cake.
It was brutal.
What I didn’t know then was radical acceptance.
Pain is what happens when something goes wrong. Suffering is when we resist it.
💫 Acceptance means choosing to move forward anyway. You can’t control the conditions, but you can control how you show up.
I’m not proud of how much I let that forecast affect my mood for Boston.
So today, I’m changing the story–reframing how I felt about the race (and myself):
🌟 Proud, that I qualified for Boston
🌟 Reflecting on the 4 months of disiplined training (800+ miles logged)
🌟 Feeling the love, from family and friends who cheered me on, also braving the storm
🌟 Taking in the magic of Boston (Runners, Wellesley and Heartbreak Hill will take your breath away)
Radical acceptance can shift your mindset in the moment. It’s also something you can come back to, years later.
And it’s never too late to do that work.
Sometimes, the most grueling experiences teach us the most. They force us to build self-compassion and appreciate how much grit it took to keep going.
Good luck to all the runners on Monday!
