This past weekend (May 12) was the River Bank Run. In January, I made bold statements that I'd be running the race. I had three major goals for 2018 (read HERE), and the River Bank was a major one. In January, things were going well.

Then, one evening so as to be proactive, I walked to a friend's house on a cold evening. I thought this would accomplish two main things, with a third side benefit. 1. I'd get some exercise, 2. My body temp would go down (good for burning fat?). Then 3rdly, the walk was in opposition to taking an Uber, so the 3rd benefit was saving cash. But then, while looking up at a beautiful sky, I stepped in a pothole and turned my ankle.

I was unable to run for a month.

I'd been so good, too - running consistently, lifting weights, being active - and then I had the setback. When the ankle was almost healed, I sprained it again - on the last play of a fake football game during halftime of a Michigan State basketball game. I had to take a month off running again. This time, it was way worse.

Just before the first setback, I'd finally hit the 5-mile mark. That distance was my average run for years, so getting back there was the first major piece to getting in shape. Though passerby's may have thought I was walking, I ran 5-miles. I had the route down - the first one I was excited about from my house - and I had the routine down. Since it was close, I did things like walk to friend's houses on cold January evenings, instead of Uber or drive. In January, I challenged myself to write and publish something every day. Each post related to one of my goals, which were around my general well being. The race was the event that marked completion of one of those goals. By writing about them, I was accountable to myself. One evening my brother was in town for a visit; instead of hanging out and eating and drinking a lot, I went to the gym first and joined the party at later. This had been my momentum.

But now it is past. The race came and I didn't run. The question remains: What do I do about it? How do I respond? And I'm finding the questions to be much more interesting this year than ever, maybe even more interesting than the goals (or their attainment) themselves.

Say I had run, but ran slowly; sure, I'd have finished the race and accomplished my goal. But the real goal in running was to take control of my work, body, and finances in 2018. The race was simply a metric. In the wake of the race, I'd still be wanting my body to be better. What I mean is that the race wasn't, nor had it been, the actual goal. To confuse the two would be to give up.

Giving up is easy when you don't accomplish something. But giving up is what losers do. Giving up starts the slow crawl to the middle aged death so many people die.

I refuse to do that.

The response is to simply keep going.