Many of us were in Brooking yesterday running either the Half Marathon or the Marathon. We saw signs out on the road talking about “Forrest Gump”, and his line “I just felt like running!” Well, that got me thinking about a lot of similarities yesterday in relation to the movie Forrest Gump. You will see me use quite a few quotes from the movie as well to make my point. That initial heading could just as well have said “I just like to run!’, or “I just like to exercise!”, or “I just like to run with my friends!”. Take your pick. But, as you will see, there are many similarities, and lessons to learn from this movie.
First, we have 2 people in our run group, WARC, Watertown Area Run Club, that actually look like Forrest Gump with their thick beards: Owen and Greg. Yesterday, Owen had a great day, running the marathon and qualifying for the Boston Marathon! You have no idea how difficult that is to do!
Here Owen is coming through the finish line and his wife and daughter are there to greet him, after cheering for him all through the race. This is Owen saying “and this is my Jenny!” (but he calls her Jenn!, and his daughter Kate) They were so proud of him, as were all the rest of us in WARC! We were all cheering each other on, because this run club group is special. We are all like “Bubba, my bestest good friend!” We help each other, cheer for each other, and train with each other. But, not all races go as planned. We can have the best training plan, work our butts off, and then the day of the race, everything, for whatever reason, falls apart. We have all had it happen, and there is no explanation. Running a race is “like a box of chocolates, you never know what you are going to get” on actual race day. But, you for sure will get support from the rest of us.
Erika and Jill did not have a day like they were hoping for. We helped get them to the finish line. Helping Erika get to the finish line, with several of them helping her run the last 8 miles!
I was out helping Jill get through the Half. She had also trained very hard, with a goal of trying to finish under 2 hours. It just was not in the cards that day. The last few miles she kept apologizing to me for having me run slow just to help get her in. I told her she missed the whole point. It is no longer about time. It is about running, because we like to run. I told her I was just happy I was out running a Half Marathon again. 2 years ago I did not think I would ever do this again. I thought my running was done. I came close to being completely done! Who cares about the time! We have to figure out what our “destiny” is.
We all got a medal for finishing when we crossed the finish line. I am dangling my medal in front of Paula with a tenth of a mile to the finish line to help entice her. Just like Forrest gave Jenny his medal of honor in the movie. “I just got this (medal) because I did what you told me to do. Run…run as fast as you can!” We all need that extra push at times.
We all had that finish line in sight. There is no better feeling when you turn the corner and see this in front of you. Relief! Accomplishment! Joy! Friendship!!
We did not have the McElroy’s in this picture, but we got everybody else from WARC who was there yesterday. As I stated above, we all have to figure out our “destiny”. Before Forrest’s mom died in the movie, she told him “you have to figure out your own destiny”. At the end of the movie, he says “I don’t know what my destiny is. I don’t know if my mama was right, or if Lt. Dan was right.” I don’t know for sure either what our destiny is for each of us, but one thing is for sure, especially from yesterday, it is about doing the best you can, whenever you can, and be willing to accept a little help from our friends. If we do this, we will have a “destiny” to be proud of. Be there for not only yourself, but for others. If you do the best you can, at that particular moment, then you are a success. Do what you love doing, with the people you love hanging out with. I started running 45+ years ago because “I just felt like running”, but I keep running because I love it! Find your destiny! Keep moving everybody!
Happy Mother’s Day to all of you moms out there, especially to my mom, and to my Sarah! You truly are a Wonder Woman Sarah! Thank you for all you do with, and for, our family!
These are just a sampling of some of the job duties that a Mother is responsible for! Your day never really is over as a mother. You are there 24/7 for anything that may come up with the family. You are the glue holding everything together.
A special shout out to my mom as well. This pandemic has been tough for how much we have been able to spend together. But, that does not mean I don’t think of you all of the time. We all worry, just like you do. We want the best for you, and there is no question, you want, and do, the best for us. Thank you for all of the years you have invested in us kids!
Once the kids got bigger and left the house, you took over Sarah many times as a fur mama! Always someone to help take care of! Dakota loves being your new “kid”, and appreciates all of the walks everyday, no matter the weather, or temperature!
Dakota helped us yesterday by running the Avera Breast Cancer 10k, in honor of all the mother’s who have had breast cancer. Dakota ran the first 4 miles of it with us, and loves spending time with us. Sarah especially loves it because she gets to help take care of somebody else at home, besides me!
Sarah, you are always by my side as well, helping to take care of me! Running is always easier when we run together. The weather is now getting better too so we can enjoy it even more!
Thank you Sarah for all you do, for our kids, Dakota, and for me! Your tireless effort and work truly make you more than “Wonder Woman”. It truly makes you a “Mother”! Spend time with your moms as much as you can. Time really does go fast. Let them all know how much you appreciate them! Keep moving everybody!
This week continues where I left off last week. I have 10 Life Lessons I learned from running distance, especially the Dopey Event 3 years ago. 4 days, 4 races. I went through the first 5 last week, so here goes the next 5!
6. Push the Boundaries: We can’t always stay in our comfort zone. Whenever we start feeling comfortable with where we are with our exercise, or running routine, we need to increase the challenge. If not, you will never find out how far you can go. This is me holding my medals for completing the marathon portion of the Dopey race, the “Goofy” medal because I did the Half Marathon and Marathon, and the coveted “Dopey” medal, for doing all 4 races over 4 days. This final day was the last 3 medals, but I earned 7 total for those 4 races.
Life Lesson: Only those willing to push the boundaries will be ready for the next challenge that comes into their life. If you are unwilling to challenge yourself, or push yourself, you will stay right where you are, which can become boring and dull in a hurry.
7. Do not burn out:
There is a reason why you need a rest day when you exercise, or at least have recovery days. If you don’t give yourself a break, things become much more turbulent, and you start to not be as efficient, become frustrated and angry, and have an even harder time getting sleep.
Life Lesson: If you continue to push yourself running, or exercising in general, without taking the time to rejuvenate, you will become less effective in everything you do. We all have to take a break, and learn to recover. Your health depends on it!
8. Cross Train:
We may have certain exercises that we like to do, but we have to be able to engage in other activities in order to work other muscles, and prevent breakdown of other muscles. Cross-training can help build up those other muscles, build endurance, and help with recovery from other activities. I have to emphasize this a lot to my running friends. We cannot just run! We have to do other things, and we have to learn to let our bodies recover.
Life Lessons: We cannot just become good, or interested in one thing. We have to have other interests, and explore other hobbies. Life can get really boring otherwise. Besides, you never know what other things you may really enjoy by exploring, and “testing the waters” of other things. It is also a great way to become more motivated in general as well.
9. To each their own:
Each runner, or athlete, (of which we are all athletes!), has their own unique physical and mental attributes. They may work out alone, or in a group, or may like walking, or biking, better. Whatever! The best exercise to do is the one you are going to do!
Life Lesson: There are many unknowns in life, and each person is unique. You have to be able to focus on your own strengths, and continue to keep working on your weakness’s. Just because somebody else may do things one way, does not mean that it may work for you. The opposite holds true as well. You may do things better than somebody else, and where you are strong at, others are not. Play to your own strength’s!!!!
10. Celebrate your success:
Whatever you set as your goal, once it is achieved, it brings about much satisfaction and joy. So celebrate it!
Life Lesson: No matter how small or big the goal, it deserves a celebration, and someone to celebrate it with! Chances are, those same people you are celebrating with helped you achieve those goals in the first place. They deserve to celebrate too! You should not need to have a reminder for this! Just do it! Then things just seem to flow much better with everything in life. You become more efficient. You enjoy life better. You appreciate your life better, and also those people in your life! Then just remember to keep moving everybody!
Three years ago we were at Disney, and I participated in what is called “The Dopey Challenge”. It involves 4 different races, over 4 days. It starts on day 1 with a 5K run, then 10K run, then 1/2 Marathon, and on the 4th day, a full marathon. 48.6 miles total. You get loaded up on a bus at 3AM each day, and the races officially start at 5:30. You start off in increments of 1000 people, and then it continues every 5 minutes. For that 5K I had not even got to the start line yet at 6:30, and people were already heading back on the buses because they were done! It was an incredibly tough 4 days, but I tell you, the lessons learned from this were huge. Running has taught me many things over the last 44 years that I have been running, but this was like the ultimate in teaching. I have 10 points to make. I will do 5 today, and 5 next week. Here we go!
Finding a sense of Purpose:
This challenge was the ultimate test of one’s endurance. The marathon, at 26.2 miles, was the biggest challenge I had done before, but I had not run 3 races before it in the past. Completing this took a combination of very well thought out ingredients–training, proper sleep, hydration, strategy so that I would not go out too fast on the early races and have nothing left for the biggest distance on the last day. If I was unwilling to follow through on what I thought was a well-defined plan, I would set myself up for failure.
Life Lesson: Defining a purpose and direction is not easy for all of us, but it still needs to be done. You have to have to have the right ingredients combined in order to be a success at anything in our lives.
2. Break it Down:
If I would have looked at this challenge at only the end point, and not planned for each individual day as it came, I don’t think I would have made it. You have to break it apart in manageable pieces. Everything does not seem at it appears. You can look at something many different ways, and still see something different. If you don’t break it down into manageable pieces, the overall task will be daunting, and you will not do it.
Life Lesson: Every one of us needs to have specific sub goals, and different ways to achieve it. Nobody has one set way. You have to learn to be adaptable, and listen to your body, and everything else around you, in order to achieve your end goal, whatever that may be for you.
3. Fail and Learn early
You don’t just wake up one day and think you have all of the answers. You have to learn to make changes on the fly, and accept it. I had never done this before so I had no idea what I was capable of. Was I training too much? Not enough training? Was I letting my body recover? Was I listening to my body? Was I listening to the doubts in my head? I could go on and on. We all make mistakes, but we have to learn from them.
Life Lesson: We have to be able to analyze our failures, and learn to adapt to our plan for our goals. It is never a straight line to our end goal. There are many up’s and down’s, and zig zags, but eventually we get there. If we do not learn from our mistakes, our own personal history, we will just continue to keep making the same mistakes over and over again. Why would we think that if we did not learn to adapt and change, and we kept our plan and routines the same, that the outcome would ever be any different?
4. Feedback is very important:
Distance running can be both an individual sport, and a group sport. A group sport by the support you get from others. I went on the trip with my family, and our neighbors, who are just an extension of our family. I ran the 5K with Steve Hauck; the 10K I ran alone; the 1/2 marathon also included Sarah, my twin daughters Molly and Megan, and Noah Hauck; and the marathon I ran with Carissa Hauck. I may have done all 4 events, but I had help from all of them as well to keep me going, and finish this. I think if I had done them all alone, the experience would not have been nearly as enjoyable. This support and encouragement is what goes into making me, and each of us, a better runner, or walker, etc.
Life Lesson: While it is important to have independence, and to be strong, it is equally important to have a group of people involved with you who give you support, encouragement, and feedback. This helps not only on your training, but with life’s issues in general. This leads into number 5 for today.
5. Spend time alone and in a group:
Runners are at their best when they can balance their time between solo runs, and group runs. When we are alone, we can lose ourselves in thought. When running with a group, you can learn from your peers, as well as being another ear, and mind, to bounce things off, not just about training, but life in general.
Life Lesson: Sometimes we need to be alone, to gather our thoughts, and to try and figure things out on our own. But, it is important to have other people around to learn from, to get and give support to, and to learn from, and teach to. We do not know everything ourselves. Sometimes we need to hear it from others about what has worked, and what has not, not only with training, but again, life in general. We need to both learn, and teach!
This is my T-shirt from that challenge. One of my favorites! I will bring up another 5 points next week as I continue “Dopey Life Lessons”. We all need to have challenges in order to improve ourselves. The Dopey Challenge was mine. We, and I, just need to make sure that those lessons, and choices, in general, are not “Dopey” decisions! Until next week…Keep moving everybody!
We all have those moments when we say we don’t want to do something. Especially when it comes to exercise. We always can come up with an excuse. “I am tired”, “It is boring”, ” I am too busy”, and on and on. That also goes for if we exercise too much. If we keep pushing, and don’t listen to our bodies, we just end up getting hurt and feeling frustrated. You put in all this work just so you can’t accomplish the goals you set for yourself. For the rest of us, there are many times we don’t want to exercise because we are afraid of failing. Just like everything else that comes up during our lives, if we are afraid of something, we tend to avoid it. Bottom line, we have to learn how to fail in order to learn how to succeed.
This is truly what it means to fail: It is our First Attempt in Learning. We are always learning, everyday. We learn by our mistakes. We learn by experience. We learn by living! We just have to learn how to deal with the fear of failing.
Here is the key. Do you have enough in you to not give up? Some days you may have to dig deep, but if you can’t rely on yourself, you can you rely on? That does not mean you have to tackle everything alone. You can have people in your life who are supportive, and encourage, and help cheer you on. But we as individuals still need to do the bulk of the work ourselves. We have to be able to handle our own limitations.
So keep trying until you find the right solution to succeed. Push past that fear. Push yourself. If you don’t, you never know what you may be capable of.
And, depend on those who are closest to you! You can get support from many different avenues.
So, make a decision. Decide how you are going to get past that fear. What does fear mean to you? Once you get this figured out, things will flow much easier.
The choice is yours. Keep trying. Unless you push yourself you have no idea what you are capable of. That also goes the other way. If you are pushing yourself too much, you have to listen to your body and know when to pull back.
Nothing is ever easy. Nothing in life is ever predictable. Learn from our mistakes and failures. If we don’t, then I guarantee we will keep repeating them over and over. “If at first you don’t succeed, try, try again!” Life experiences tell us a lot, and none of our lives are the same. What works for somebody, may not work for somebody else. Figure out what works right for you by learning from your mistakes. Every day is a new adventure. Keep trying until you figure out what works for you. You have to “know fear to have no fear”! Keep moving everybody!
