Real David H.

At various points in my 15 years of running, I’ve set some pretty stringent goals. Whether it was a PR in a 5K or breaking 4 hours in a marathon, I had many points of extreme focus.

The results were always extremely rewarding, but in hindsight, I don’t think I ever took the appropriate time to soak in the moments and enjoy what was happening at the time.

The patterns were very much: goal set/broke/missed, take a week or two to not worry about goals, then move on to the next thing. That’s pretty typical for a running, and it’s probably a mind frame that I will always have.

But now it’s different.

Serious injuries not only derailed me physically, but it messed me up mentally. I’ve battled back physically in the past 20 months, but it’s only been until recently that I realized how much my mind was broken.

I was going through the motions of getting back to some amazing milestones. I never, ever imagined I’d finish the Blue Ridge Marathon and even thinking about doing it again (check out HERE on some news about the 2020 race!)

But while going through those motions, I was lacking EMOTION.

This summer, though, I am finding a few feeling with running that I don’t really remember having … PEACE.

It’s difficult to explain, but stringing together runs that don’t make me feel terrible, running at different times of the day, being more observant, running more than I have in a few years, cross training, filtering out a lot of noise on social media … it all adds up.

And now as I look ahead to the Richmond Marathon and beyond, my goals have to focus on this new feeling.

There is no end game with “peace.” I also know that this feeling could change tomorrow so that’s why it’s important for me to embrace this moment.

But right now I feel refocused and refreshed even though I didn’t need it. And that’s a pretty amazing feeling to have in the middle of summer running …