Grit

I took pictures for the fun run at my son’s school today. This is how we celebrate holidays in the suburbs, we run fun runs, 5Ks, half marathons, even pay money to participate in some, …. I don’t get it, but it’s what we do. I watched a first grader trip at the start of his half mile, come out of his shoe and continue to run…. in one shoe, and he came in first. That kid has grit.

I don’t have any. Never have. In fact, if things didn’t come easy to me, I moved on to something that did, and not everything came easy to me, but enough did, that I could easily move on to something else. I’m a quitter if I’m being honest with you – and myself. Tennis, soccer, dance, diets, majors, bed making, the list goes on. If I give myself an out, I take it. If I miss even once, I tend to stop all together; it’s all or nothing with me.

I say this because my foot hurts. A lot. I have that plantar fasciitis, and it won’t go away. I was on my feet all morning and wasn’t able to go to the gym until the afternoon. By the time I left the school, I was in tears because my foot hurt, I had to have my husband drive down the street to get me….. 10 houses away. I iced my foot, took some Advil and waited until I could go to the gym. While waiting, I thought, you know, I ran a bit taking the Pics, I was on my feet all morning and kinda got a workout in with those awkward squatting angles you have to do to get elementary aged kids crossing a finish line. I was completely justified in not going -all while being annoyed that I couldn’t make it earlier. Long story longer, I went. I finally got there about 4 o’clock, limping my way in. I went and roughed it out, not because I have grit, or determination, but because I know myself. If I let myself miss because of this, it’s a slippery slope to quitting all together and I CAN’T quit this time. I was able to run through the school twice to get to the finish line for the smaller kids. Without getting winded, without blaming my asthma or my foot to cover my embarrassment for why I could only run a few steps. That’s huge. I was able to get down low to get them coming off the starting line AND get back up to run to another location. I squatted down to get over 300 kids crossing the finish line. That’s 300 squats! And I was STILL able to do goblet squats at the gym later!

If anyone has any experience with plantar fasciitis, comment on here what helped you please! I’ve done some acupuncture (not much though, needles in my feet hurt!) stretching, bought new shoes -twice, bought arch supports, did the stretches, rolled my foot on a frozen water bottle…. anyone have anything else? Oh, I burned mugwort over it too, which shows that I’ll try anything, no matter how crazy it sounds, I’m open to it.

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