Thank God It Was Me

Let's start off with the most important fact of the night and that is I crushed my training run tonight! This is the last week of my 3 weeks of "unstructured training" so I didn't even know how far I was going when I ran out the door. I ended up running a little over 5 1/2 miles keeping an average pace of 10:05/mi. The weather was perfect for running and I really enjoyed not having a preset route or distance. 

Running in the dark

So I do have a goal of trying to keep my blog posts positive, but I also believe it is important to be as honest as possible when sharing my journey. I'm sure all of you will have different thoughts about what follows, but if you like to stick with the positive, then you should probably stop reading here.

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For those that know me, or have been keeping up with my blog posts, it is no secret that I am an overweight individual. You also know, that for the past 4 years I have been working very hard towards changing that. For the first time in those 4 years I had someone yell a derogatory remark at me out the window of a truck that was driving by as I was running. I was over 4 miles into my run when it happened and very much "in the zone" so it took a second for me to process what had happened and my thoughts were as follows:

Thought #1: Well duh? Like I don't know that? Why do you think I'm out here running?

Thought #2: Thank God it was me that they decided to yell at. I am at a point that although I desire to improve my body composition, I am very confident with my body (have you seen what I wear for my races?!?). 

They could have been yelling at an obese middle aged man who just had a wake up call when his aging dad had a heart attack and decided to give running a try out of desperation. Or maybe it could have been a mother of 4 who is embarrassed by how she looks and finally built up the courage to ask for some "me time" to go for a run. Or maybe it is a single guy in his 20's that has always been made fun of and is choosing to run after dark to avoid being seen and judged. 

Thank God it was me and none of those people, because I know that I can brush something like that off and keep going. Everyone is on a journey in life and everyone's journey is different. If you take something away from this post, don't let it be anger, frustration, or embarrassment. Instead, I ask that you do your best to be kind to others even when it is not easy or even when they don't seem deserving. I challenge everyone reading this blog post to do 1 extra nice thing for someone tomorrow. Something as simple as saying hello or holding a door, or even better yet, ask someone how their day is going or tell someone they are doing a great job. If we do that, then we will all help make tomorrow better than today.