When It’s Good to Lose
Generally speaking, I hate to lose. I’m a fairly competitive person who enjoys setting goals and then crushing them. Adrenaline is my preferred drug of choice and a healthy ambiance of chaos is rather appealing to me.
But when I lost a two mile beach run race yesterday, I have never been more happy.
Why?
Well, I lost to my 7 year old son.
I was planning a longer run when Julius asked to join me. Remembering how much fun he had when he ran with me at the Elma 5k a couple months ago, I was happy to have him with me. I was thinking we’d probably run pretty slow and that I’d need to run again later if I wanted any kind of workout.
Boy was I wrong.
We ran the two miles in close to 17 minutes. Not blazing fast, but that’s pretty darn fast for me. A little more than 8:30 mile.
I was toast. Julius could have probably kept going.
The best part was when we were near the finish, Julius looks over to me and says:
“My body wants to quit but I’m just not going to will that to happen.”
Right on, little man!
That’s the essence of why running, or any kind of competition or goal, is so sweet. It’s the mental willingness of it all. It’s what you do when you are out of juice that counts. Accomplishing a goal is largely about deciding to do so.
As for me, I’ve never been so happy to lose. Because now I have the best running buddy ever. My son.
And we already have a new goal. The Seafair Torchlight Run on July 31. Booyah!
