Don't Want To Be Someone Who Can't Live Up To What I've Already Done

"I don't ever want to become someone who can't live up to what he already done." - Brent Dennen.

 I hate that line.  I hate it because I have become someone who can't live up to what he has already done.  It is more then that though.  I made a gamble.  That's a lie.  I made a decision a long time ago.  I made the choice that I would make myself into something.  I would do by myself through a force of will that I was born with and by using my self honesty and intelligence to find the direction to direct that will.  It sounds simple.  I guess it is but it was also brutal.  For it to work it had to all come down to me.  There could be no blaming anyone but myself.  In some ways it was a masterpiece from the pile I did what couldn't be done, but only moments after finding the sunlight I slide back to darkness and failure.  

  That failure could only belong to one person.  It was mine and mine alone.  Each day I was unable to find my way back to fix what I had broke was another failure.

  I am a man who can't live up to what he already done.

  The above is something I wrote a while back.  It sums up in a way how I have felt since my failure to return to the marathon in the last 7 years.  It isn't that I have spent every day of the last 7 years feeling like a failure.  I am aware that there is more to life than just running.  Still there many times when I couldn't help but feel like a failure.  I had work so hard for so long to overcome so much failure to reach the point where I was knocking on the door of being the runner I had dreamed of being for my whole life and then one strange little injury that wouldn't go away and I was suddenly done.  I could see things I should have done to avoid the problem before it started but for my life I couldn't fix it.

  Now nearly as suddenly as I find myself with a small crack in the door and a chance that I may yet be a comeback kid.  Heck even if I don't successfully get through racing a marathon I have been able to train for one and that has been an act of joy.  I love these long enduring workouts.  My whole life in some ways was a build up to the type of training I did for the Olympic Trials and it was an act of joy. Now over the last couple months I have been able to return to those runs and workouts and that joy.