It poured on us for an hour and a half.
As you may or may not know, my friend Laurie and I recently went to Alaska for vacation. The whole trip was built around running a half marathon there.
Laurie is on a quest to complete a half marathon in every state. It just happened that the 49th state on her quest was the 49th state added to the union in the tiny town of Cordova!
It was overcast on race morning but it wasn’t raining as it had for the previous two weeks, so we were optimistic that it was going to be a great day.
We toed the starting line with 150 other runners and after a very anti-climactic “go” from the dude who drove us to the starting line in the bus, we were off.
Off like a herd of turtles. (Laurie and I see no reason to rush through these races!)
At about mile seven, Laurie commented cheerfully, “It’s a little boring, but at least it’s not raining.”
(Can you feel the foreshadowing?) A few minutes later, it started raining. No…it started pouring, and I was very grumpy about it. We had 6 miles to go. It had been raining for 2 minutes and 47 seconds and I was already soaked and convinced the race was ruined.
And then I asked myself,
“Is it THAT bad?”
And I realized that the truth was, it wasn’t that bad.
Rain was in the forecast, so we both had many layers on including a water resistant raincoat (though I did learn very quickly that my water resistant raincoat wasn’t quite as water resistant as advertised.)But when I asked that question…Is it that bad? And I genuinely thought about the answer, which was “no, it wasn’t that bad”, everything changed.
I realized that yes, I was wet. But I wasn’t cold. The terrain had turned from flat plains with mountains in the distance, to huge rock-lined roads along the lake with waterfalls and green growing everywhere. It was absolutely beautiful. I was with one of my best friends, in a beautiful place on vacation, laughing our butts off. Not only was it not that bad, but it was actually pretty great.
It’s amazing how our brains can take one unpleasant thing and make it the entire experience. Had I let the fact that I was soaked become the whole story, it would’ve been a pretty terrible day.But as we sat soaking wet, dripping on the floor at the all-community salmon barbecue post-race dinner, Laurie and I agreed that was one of the most fun races we had done in our 23 years of running together.
So next time one crappy thing starts hijacking your whole experience, ask yourself,
“Is it that bad?”
Maybe it is.
But maybe just one thing sucks…and the rest is pretty great! (or at least not THAT bad.) It’s worth checking. Might save an otherwise crappy experience.
Go get ‘em, Tiger!
