A personal worst time but still a winner

It took me ages to find my result in last nights Evening Times souvenir pull out.

I knew that it had taken at least 9 minutes to cross the start line and when I reached the finish the clock said 1 hour 13 minutes and some odd seconds so I was looking at somewhere between 1 hour 3 and 1 hour 5 for my finish. I started with the worst possible finish time and worked back - a psychological ploy to make me feel better, when I found my name at 1 hour 4 minutes 15 seconds the ploy failed. It took 2 chocolate mini rolls to stop me wanting to burst into tears, I was 3 minutes 34 seconds slower than I had been at the Grangemouth race in March, an all time worst time.

I took heart in the improvement I have made in weight lifting - I am now comfortable shifting 7kg on bicep curls and have moved the chess press up 2 notches since I first started, but none of that could move me from feeling fat and slow.

It wasn't until this morning when I took a gander through the rest of the Evening Times and I saw a side bar note in the comments section that I felt better - right at the bottom of the "In our Opinion" bar was the heading "Salute to Winners" and the entry read as follows

"The record breaking numbers who took part in yesterday's Britannic Asset Management Women's 10K in Glasgow is testament to the event's growing popularity.
And the sweltering conditions faced by the competitors made their many personal achievements all the greater.
Quite simply, every one of the 12,612 women who crossed the line is a winner"

Those few lines really moved me and took me back to a time when I couldn't even mange to run for more than 2 minutes without having a near death experience. I really have moved on, I really have made an achievement. The fact that I can finish a 10K race at all is a massive achievement compared to where I used to be. I may not be able to ever be as fast as the elite runners but I can be the best I can be and if that's a 60+ minute 10K then so be it. Sometimes it's not the finishing time that is important it's the fact you entered at all, or in the words of John "the Penguin" Bingham "The miracle isn't that I finished. The miracle is that I had the courage to start."

I have started to re-read his best selling book "The courage to start" and I am finding the renewed inspiration and wisdom in his words, thanks John.