100 Days of Wonder – #41

Well today is Disney Dining Reservation Day – and for those who don’t understand why that might be important, I shall explain when I get to posting about it. I was going to that today but I want to post about running and also I am still not quite ready to give you more pictures from the US. So here I am being slobbered on by a French police horse at Disneyland Paris after completing their half marathon in September 2016. That half marathon was awful. I had horrible tummy troubles, the route wasn’t exciting, I may have had several minor tantrums along the way and when I was done I wasn’t even really glad I did it or proud or anything. I was just grumpy with a poorly tummy. I blogged about it at the time. Well, I was thinking about that half marathon and a few disastrous training runs and horrible races on my run this morning. It was also awful (see here) but now I have so much in the memory bank that awful can quickly turn to comical. I reminded myself that I have had awful runs before, they end. In some awful runs you learn to do something differently next time (who knew those knickers wouldn’t work with those pants or maybe start fuelling before you get to 11 miles…) but in others the only thing you learn is that they end. And actually that’s maybe even more important. Whether in running or using running as a metaphor for life stuff, the bad ones and the good ones end. Nothing is really permanent and all we can do is roll with it and try and run (and live) by our values. I think when I was younger I was really good at that, now I overthink. Running, but actually in particular Disney running, has taught me that a bad run (keep using it as a metaphor if it helps) ends and then that’s it. It doesn’t define the rest of the day or week, or the next run, or the next race or anything. At Disney it is easy to move on because everything around you is designed to make you feel good and have fun. I try and carry that with me. A bad run, a bad meeting, bad news, awful election results, crappy day… whatever. It doesn’t have to define what comes next. You can always go get slobbered on by a police horse and then go shoot evil aliens in the park – and I’ll leave you to construct your own metaphor from that!