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Three Seconds

Three seconds - that’s how much my friend Sharon missed qualifying for Boston by this past weekend at the Hamilton marathon.

Three seconds.

One. Two. Three.

That’s how much my friend Sharon missed qualifying for Boston by this past weekend at the Hamilton marathon.

Let’s put that in perspective. It takes me three seconds to:

– Sneeze
– Take a sip of water
– Fondle my Tiddy Bear

And here’s the thing, I paced her for the last 10K.

Crap.

Since Sunday, I haven’t been able to shake the feeling that I let her down. I should have pushed her harder — Seriously, If only I had shoved her across the finish line she might have squeaked in.

To be honest, these past few days have been a blurry of “if onlys:” If only I had screamed louder; If only I had run faster; if only I hadn’t stopped to reapply my GLH.

But what’s done is done.

And Sharon wasn’t the only one to struggle. Another guy in my running group was primed for a PB and a Boston qualifier and then lost his chip around the 6km mark. Yet another was forced to wait six minutes for an angry train that passed straight through the marathon course.

The whole thing’s got me thinking: In 2007, fellow blogger and runner extraordinaire, Reid Coolsaet, worked his butt off in an effort to qualify for the World Championship 5000m race. Just like my friends, he trained hard and he was ready.

Race day he missed the standard by 3/100ths of a second. He didn’t make the team.

“Sure if I had been faster it would have been gratifying,” he told me. “But instead of being upset, I just refocused on a different goal.” That goal was qualifying for the Ivo Van Damme 10,000m race later that year. Which of course, Reid did. This past September he ran the Scotiabank Toronto Waterfront Marathon in 2:11:23, virtually guaranteeing himself a spot at the Olympics in 2012.

Now, I’m not sure that pushing my friends on to Olympic glory is the next logical step, but I do think Reid’s onto something. What’s done is done and it’s time to put things in perspective and look on the bright side.

They all ran super awesome marathons, they ran them faster than most people who run marathons, they are some of the fittest human beings on the planet and hey, my hair still looks amazing.

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