Contradictions...

I am sitting at home ready to fly to Portugal. I have not been away for 7 months now. Strange, it makes me realise how much my life had become dominated by running. Last year by May I had been away 6 times, usually using a race as an excuse!

I feel more positive now about my potential distance running ability. It is strange to be setting targets, hugely ambitious targets, when I am not even able to run for 5 minutes without pain. Without belief that things will get better, and that when they do I will be back better, and stronger and quicker, there is no point. I have been averagely good at a lot of things in life. I have always seemed to do well in the workplaces I have ended up in. I have not had a career though because I have not had the passion for any specific area of work to push to become great at it. I was an averagely good photographer, averagely good DJ, averagely good when I worked in marketing, and project management. When I use the term 'average' I am not benchmarking myself against others, it is average for me, for what I could achieve. If I had stuck with my first job after University maybe I would have become very good at it....but I firmly believe you have to have a passion for something to achieve your very best, because most of that achievement is mental, rather than skill based.

I think I have enough passion for my running, and my coaching, to go beyond being averagely good at both. I don't have much natural athletic ability, but I believe I have enough, and more importantly the passion and the discipline to go well beyond the target I set for myself when I started this blog.

Over the last week my knee has been painful, running on consecutive days, and spinning, caused that. It's settling down now, and I will go and enjoy my holiday. A week on Friday I will see the results of my MRI and I will know just how long my road from here is, it's been 4 months now, and I am sure several more months if not longer still to go, but when I do come back it will be to be the best I can be, to go well beyond the goal of this blog, which is not (for me) averagely good.