fail harder

Fail harder.

This was on a poster I recently saw and I instantly fell in love. With the idea. Not the poster. That would just be weird.

Training for the New York Marathon this season has proved to be more challenging than I had previously anticipated. Not because I’m injured (thank god) but because I’m finding my focus really divided. Who knew that working full time, going to school and full time training would be a bit of a handful? Um…

Vancouver has to be one of the most beautiful cities in the world for a runner – I feel as though I can make that statement with a fair amount of confidence considering I’ve run all over 5 of the 7 continents – but there are a lot of parts of YVR that feel just like other cities. Coming along the seawall and climbing Prospect Point reminds me of coming through the Presidio of San Francisco and Gastown always makes me feel as though I’m back in my beloved Boston. However, there are few places that feel so completely like home as the North Shore trails – where I first learned to run. Tonight I traded my 10km tempo for trails. Did I mention I live right on the Varley Trail? I ditched my Garmin, picked up my iPod and took off. I was alone. I wasn’t watching my pace. I didn’t care. It was perfect.

So I failed at being able to do it all. I won’t PB in NYC and that’s fine. I will, however, run a race I’ve been dying to do for 10 years with people I love. I will do this knowing that if you want to run the race, you’ve got to make it to the finish line first. And to do that you’ve sometimes got to fail first.

Advertisement