Once Upon A Time…

I raced today.  I was so excited to get out on a course and kill it. But I didn’t kill it. I was terrible.  It was only a 5 mile race and I missed my goal by a minute and a half.  That may not sound like much, but on a 5 mile course, 92 seconds is a lot.  I started out too fast, and I know that for me, that is the kiss of death.  I wore shoes that I don’t usually run in, I had to stop and retie both of them with very cold fingers.  (Note to self: double knot the Kinvaras, especially when you may lose dexterity)  But mostly, I was just a head case.  Didn’t I JUST write a post about this very thing?!  I was supposed to run the whole thing today with my friend, Nicole.  We were going to get after it.  I was not planning to tell her to go on ahead without me.  Blech.

I still finished in the top 7% overall, and I finished in the top 3% of women runners.  I was 29 out of 913 women my age.  I still averaged 7:55/mile. (Would have been 7:45/mile without the 2 pauses to retie shoes…stupid)  Why am I disappointed in this?  Because I had a goal in mind.  I wasn’t really out there to compete with anyone other than myself, or so I said.  And I blew it.  Or at least it felt like I did.

As the day progressed I realized what had happened.  I carried a lot of baggage through that race with me today.  It’s funny how you can be doing your favorite thing in the world, with one of your favorite friends, amongst thousands of happy Irish people (or at least people wearing green and pretending to be Irish) on St. Patty’s Day…and still feel lonely.  How is that even possible?  Well, sometimes we have to battle old demons.  They can weigh on us, exhaust us, slow us down.

As I was driving home, I began writing this story in my head…

Once upon a time, there was a beautiful, young princess.  Her name was Lulu.  Princess Lulu loved to run.  Running made her feel wonderful and beautiful and free.

One day, when Lulu was still just a girl, one of her friends decided to steal something from her.  She trusted him.  But he took something from Lulu and it caused her to break a little on the inside.  He broke a part of her, the part that made her remember that she was beautiful.  Lulu was sad.  She didn’t want to get her friend in trouble and she thought she was to blame for allowing him to take it.  So she kept it a secret.  She didn’t tell anyone about what her friend had done for a long, long time.

A few years later, Lulu was separated from her father.  She missed him tremendously.  Her father was the person that reminded her that she was beautiful no matter what.  And she started to forget.  The broken part not only caused her to forget that she was beautiful and forget all the good things about herself, it started breaking up other parts too.  It got worse.  The longer she kept the secret, the harder it was to remember the girl she had once been and she started to believe that she was anything but beautiful.

Princess Lulu still loved to run.  It still made her feel good.  But it no longer made her feel beautiful.  Now it made her feel tough.  And if she was tough, then she felt powerful, and that would show other people that they couldn’t take things away from her.

But then, one day many years later, her father came back.  She was scared; she didn’t want him to see the brokenness that made her feel so yucky.  But her father had a special mirror that allowed Lulu to see not only her beauty on the outside, but more importantly all of the beautiful parts on the inside.  Her father already knew about the broken parts, and he could help put them back together.  He showed her that she was beautiful even without the part that was missing.  Slowly, her heart began to mend and the more beauty she could see in herself, the more beautiful she became.

When she ran, it was no longer about feeling beautiful or feeling tough, it was just about being who she was and reminding herself how far she had come, all those miles that were behind her.  It was about reminding herself that she wasn’t broken anymore.

Today when I ran, I wasn’t running for me.  I was running to try to prove something, but I was carrying around so much weight that it just didn’t work.  I forgot how far I’ve come.  I forgot to just be me.  And the more things went wrong, the more I slowed myself down worrying about them.   So, even though I didn’t hit my goal this time, I guess I didn’t entirely blow it, because as always, I learned a lesson from the experience.

So, do you want to know the rest of the story? What happened to Princess Lulu?  Well, the story isn’t over yet.  It’s still being written.  But you should know that Princess Lulu is healthy and happy, most of the time anyway.  She will never get back what that boy who claimed to be her friend took away from her, but she has learned to look beyond it.  She no longer feels like a victim of his theft.  And she knows she is not defined by the part that is missing.  Some days she feels beautiful and other days she wrestles with what exactly that means.  But no matter how she sees herself, she knows that her father always sees her in that special mirror and she knows that, more than anything, she is loved.

 

Wearing green and ready to run with one of my favorites.

Wearing green and ready to run with one of my favorites.

One thought on “Once Upon A Time…

  1. Diana

    You have such a beautiful spirit, Linds! Thank you for sharing – I know that we can all relate that the time on the clock doesn’t even begin to tell the full story of a race.

    Reply

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