The second lesson of the season: gratitude is easy to preach and very hard to practice — especially when you’re standing at the finish line furious at yourself.
I finished my 70.3.
I want to lead with that because for a while after the race, I was struggling to. My swim was strong. My bike was solid. The first half of my run felt good. And then my hamstring gave out, and the second half of my run was one of the hardest things I’ve done in recent memory.
I finished. I crossed the line. And I was miserable.
Not because I didn’t finish — I did. But because it didn’t look the way I wanted it to . I had a picture in my head of crossing that finish line feeling strong and proud and victorious. Instead, I was in pain, limping, and honestly pretty pissed off about it.
I’m going to post the finish line photo. Fair warning: I am frowning. I am in sheer pain! Because I am hurting and furious. No triumphant arms-up moment. Just me, grimacing, trying to stay upright.
It took someone else to reframe it for me. Someone pulled me aside and said:
“You had a really good 85%. And a hard 15%. Why are you only focused on the 15%?” Thank Todd
And they were right. They were completely right. And I hated it.
Because that’s the thing about negativity — it’s fast. It moves in immediately and takes up all the space. One bad quarter of a race, one rough workout, one bad week, and suddenly that’s the whole story. The good stuff gets crowded out almost instantly.
The 85% — the strong swim, the solid bike, the fact that I finished a 70.3 — should have been the headline. Instead I let the 15% write the whole article.
I say “be grateful” to clients all the time. And I mean it. But standing at that finish line with a screaming hamstring and a frown on my face, gratitude was the last thing I felt. It took days — and someone else’s perspective — to actually get there.
That’s the real lesson. Gratitude isn’t a feeling that shows up automatically when things go well. It’s a practice. It’s a choice you make, sometimes through gritted teeth, to look at what went right instead of cataloguing what went wrong.
No matter what you’re doing — a race, a workout, a work project, a hard conversation — there is almost always something in the 85% worth acknowledging. Something that went better than you’re giving yourself credit for. Something you built, something you finished, something you showed up for.
Find that thing first. Sit with it for a minute before you pick apart the rest.
It’s so easy to say. I know. I say it all the time.
But I’m saying it now having actually had to do it — and it’s worth practicing.
