Fighting the Bad Dreams

Today I am putting on my running shoes for the first time since the Buffalo Marathon on May 29th. It was nice to get away from the running for a week, but now it is time to get back and work harder than I have ever worked before.

Since the race I have had bad dreams almost every night about people laughing at me , calling me a failure. I have woken up several times with the feeling that I have let people down, and that I am a quitter. I think about the race all the time and question my decision to drop out. Should I have tried to finish? Should I have run until my body quit working ?

When I see my friends that happen to be runners, I find myself hanging my head and have trouble making eye contact when I talk to them. Not sure the reason why, but maybe subconsciously I feel that I don't measure up .

My two races this year have not gone the way that I liked . I know that I have worked hard to prepare for both and with at least two more races coming up I have to continue to work so I can turn this around, but how do I erase the nervousness that I feel and this new expectation that I have that I am going to fail? Training the mind is much harder than training the body.

I am going to try to do it the only way that I know how, and that is to lace up my shoes and get back at it, put my faith in God and the ability that He gave me to run for long distances. There is a reason why I am having these troubles and I have to learn something from it.

But first I have to cut the timing chip off my shoe from a week ago.