A few random thoughts on my half-marathon

This morning, I woke up to what I believe was a mouse eyeball and mouse kidney in my living room...

Which was slightly worse than yesterday's mouse tail, but not quite as bad as the full dead mouse from two days ago.

Why yes, my house will be on Zillow by the end of the week if I have a say in it....

Before I get too far into this email, in honor of Veteran's Day, I want to give a quick shout out to my favorite Veteran, my Dad. He enlisted in the Navy as soon as he graduated from high school, because he would have been drafted anyway.

While I might have been all over the map at 18, I can't imagine spending four years having other people tell you where to go and what to do, and the horrors that you might see as a result. To my Dad and all of the veterans out there, thank you.

As many of you know, I flew out to San Francisco to run the Golden Gate Half-Marathon on November 2nd. Here are a couple of random thoughts from that experience.

1. Yes, I did finish

A friend texted me last week to ask if I finished the race and got back from California, which is when I realized that while I posted a few clips of the start of the race to Instagram, I never posted anything after that.

If you've known me for any length of time, that tracks.

2. Thank you, to all of you

Thanks to all of you, we were second in total donations for the American Cancer Society for this race with 3,017.53.

3. I lied

I decided to do this race as a statement to myself on my recovery from cancer. My cardio capacity took a huge hit after having a giant tumor pushing on my lungs and diaphragm, and I thought that training would help me get my cardio back.

I viewed this training and my recovery as a return to who I used to be - to the athlete I used to be. So while I told everyone that my only goal was to finish, I realized when I crossed the finish line 35 minutes slower than my previous half-marathon that I was still locked in on the used to.

Clients often tell me about what they used to do; and we talk about the danger in comparing the current version of ourselves with previous versions. And yet it is so ingrained for most of us that moving out of this line of thinking takes a lot of effort and intention.

I ended the day hanging out in Ghiradelli Square, sitting outside near a fire and enjoying the foggy mist of the city. I pulled the list of names I compiled out of my pocket - the one that I'd read aloud before the half-way point of the race because there were so many hills - and read it again.

Some of the names were people that I knew who died from cancer; my mentor, my grandfather - some are people that I know who have survived.

Many names were given to me by all of you, and all I knew is that they were affected by cancer.

For at least a few minutes, I tried to shift my focus away from performance to appreciating the possibility.