I like to run.
We’ve talked about this before.
My time running is my own, and I usually spend the time in familiar accustomed solitude, enjoying the exercise and my mildly-elevated heartbeat while listening to a book.
Extra added bonus: it’s also my classroom, because I always listen to business or self-development books.
I run different distances on different days, with Sunday being the longest mileage of the week generally.
Every great once in a while, I’ll enter a race.
They usually have a shirt, or at least some kind of swag, but also, it’s fun to jump out there and go running with other people.
After a year or two I quit worrying about what people were doing around me, and learned how to enjoy the communal nature of the thing.
I ran a race yesterday that I just have to talk about today, because the allegories between this trail race, in it’s first year, and the trials and tribulations of starting a business were running through my head even as I was running over the rocky uneven ground and climbing brutally steep hills.
Let me just see if I can talk about it, and what I was thinking about at the time, in a trail report-fashion.
We have a terrain feature here in Colorado Springs called Pulpit Rock, and a couple of local businesses and a church are named after it. The public space it sits in, Pulpit Rock Park, borders an area called Austin Bluffs Open Space.
This is all within shouting distance of our closest college, the University of Colorado Colorado Springs, aka UCCS.
Lucky me, it’s even closer to my house. I can run/trot/climb to Pulpit Rock’s summit from my driveway in 1 ¾ miles.
So, I run in here, a lot. The only wildlife I’ve seen in here besides the pestilential mule deer of our area was one coyote the first year I lived here, 2019.
I’ve seen more bears on my street (three) than in the park (zero, so far).
Oh, and the dogs whose owners don’t understand leashing their pets when they’re not under perfect voice command.
Far too many of these. People, runners and cyclists are quite often training for something, and your mutt can cause an injury. Please be courteous.
Just because YOU know (I hear this way too often) that he won’t hurt anybody doesn’t mean I know that.
Mini-rant over.
I can close my garage door after my stretch and be in the Open Space area in ¼ mile.
It’s nice.
All of this rich context is provided to you because a few young people decided to inaugurate a trail 10K race that circumnavigates most of Open Space and finishes up near the Rock itself.
They called it the Pulpit Primer, and 2022 was Year One.
Fact: at 63 I was the oldest entrant, and the only entrant over 59. That provided me not only the Old Goat Prize, but also 1st AG (age group) by default.
Yay me.
There were 34 of us in the flagship year. 22 men, 12 women.
I was not dead last, thank goodness. In fact, I think I placed 20th. That’s good enough, because I didn’t really care to begin with. I was just in it to check out the course.
I learned several new side trails despite my familiarity with the area.
So, on with the report:
The course was counter-clockwise on a map, both beginning and ending on the little dirt trail that parallels Campus Heights Drive by UCCS’s Mountain Lion Park (one of the baseball diamonds). The first half mile or so was on a wide gravel track that eventually leads back to my house.
Then, a right turn and a gradual climb, followed by a couple of more turns and the ascent got serious.
Like, Pikes Peak Barr Trail serious, even worse in a couple spots. It slowed many people to a walk, though I did my own best to do a little jogging pace.
Finally, you get up to the top, with a look at the back side of the U’s campus, and it becomes a little bit more like a trail run again.
At about 1.47 there is a junction with a sub-trail that I know leads up to a city street, which we pass. By this time, I was keeping pace with a gentleman who had asked me if I wanted to pass. I declined at the time, and kind of “drafted” behind him, making light convo while running.
He went a way that was familiar to me and I naturally followed, but at that time we didn’t know we’d missed a marked turn on a slightly smaller fork. So, we got us some bonus distance in, probably about a ¼ mile all told by the time we realized.
Blech. I saw one guy that looked as grey-haired as I do behind me earlier, and I was trying to stay ahead of him. The whole age group thing. Yeah, I guess I did care, a little! I was sure I just lost my place in front of him, and it turns out I did.
I had tripped and caught myself on both hands earlier, and the guy I was running with asked if I was okay, but I told him yeah keep running I’m good. A teeny-tiny spider-sized road rash on one palm, bounced back up like Maggie Simpson, I was back on his heels again in no time.
We found the lost fork and got going, now behind a pack of new people, and for my part I was mentally willing myself to go when the rocks weren’t bad and it was level or downhill. I was even thinking about maybe passing my new buddy once the next ascent was conquered and we were headed downhill a bit, when BAM!
Much harder fall, little time to react, dug up a juicy strawberry on my right knee and cut open my right elbow. It was bleeding like merry hell once I got done swearing and picked myself up again.
Here’s the thing, and this is where the business development allegory started settling into my id: I did get up, and without any hesitation at all kept moving. Ancillary useless thoughts fly through the head and are dismissed instantly, such as what are you going to do about it, anyway? There’s no aid station, not even water on my belt because I left it home, and though bloody I was still 100% able to move.
So, move I did. Without hesitation.
Thinking right away, the idea that you do not fail until you fall and don’t get back up again.
Furthering the metaphor, I resolved to take greater care, and not do it again.
I knew I wanted, in fact NEEDED to finish, and with over half of the distance still ahead of me I had to just figure out how to succeed.
I’ll tell you this next: one of my feet (ironically, almost always the right foot) caught a little on up-jutting rocks several more times.
Each time I said to myself, quietly but out-loud, “Oh, no, knock that off.”
And knock it off I did.
The final fourth of the course, the last 1 ½ miles were very familiar to me, and the pointy treacherous rocks weren’t as bad, and I fairly flew to the finish from there.
Because, I told myself I would.
I had learned the hard lesson in Mile 2.
I adjusted.
I made it to the end, with the idea that I was going to write all this down for you.
And now? I have.
You are only finished when you say you are.
Your path to success is not a smooth gradual sloping ramp upwards.
It’s a rocky, treacherous, gut-wrenching pain-in-the-ass bitch, with breathless ascents and tricky descents.
And in the end, it’s worth it.
Trust me!
If you want to discuss a ready guide for your business journey, you should really get ahold of me.
The first call is free, and I’ll even be happy to talk about this recent adventure, too!
All you have to do is click here: https://owingsllc.com/work-with-me/
Let’s talk about the least treacherous paths on your journey of success.
And the shortcuts (tax savings, profitability, and cash flow management) along the way, too!