I guess you could say that the title of today’s post is a variation of “Never give up” but I look at it (and experienced it) a bit differently. To me “Never Give Up” has to do with long term goals and processes. My simple statement of “Keep on going” is meant to be a short term mantra or way of living. In ultrarunning we call it “Relentless Forward Motion” – for me that simply meant one foot in front of the other.

Yesterday’s run made me come up with this “keep on going” philosophy again (I’m sure we have all heard this many times in our lives). I went out for an early morning run before work. My shins were not feeling great so I was discouraged again (they get better with AIRROSTI and then I abuse them again and they hurt). But I was out there early and decided just to go a “bit further”. First I told myself I would go about a mile and a half. But by the time I got there I was feeling better so I said “ok, we’ll go to 2 miles”. Then it was 2.5 miles and finally I said “you have just enough time to make it to 3 miles before you have to turn around to make it home to get ready for work. So I persisted. And you know what? It was the very best run I’ve had in months – I felt free and happy and unencumbered. In fact, I have been enjoying running just for running’s sake lately that I am reconsidering going to New York in November. We’ll see.

But I digress. What’s important is that if I had aborted that run yesterday a.m. I would NOT have been able to experience the euphoria I felt. Maybe that’s the “runner’s high” that I never really experience. Maybe it was just the feeling of freedom and the night. All I know is that I learned simply to “keep on going” and see what happens.

Try it – when things don’t seem great, just keep going and see what happens. You may be pleasantly surprised like I was.

This is short today because, you guessed it – I’m out the door on another run!

Terrie

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