Thanks to dailymile I have the ability to easily compile a record of all my runs. I wish I’d discovered the site earlier and that it had existed when I first started running a few years back.
Fortunately, my favorite run of all time is preserved there for posterity.
It isn’t my first marathon. That came long before I joined dailymile, and although I was proud to finish, the heat and effort required made for a pretty miserable experience.
It isn’t my longest run. That 50 miler was great, but not extraordinary in any way besides length.
It isn’t this year’s Madison Marathon, when I qualified for Boston at just my third marathon. Another proud moment, but not my favorite.
No, my favorite run of all time was my first run on Brier Island this past summer. It was so much fun running a real trail, a trail that I’d walked so many times as a kid, a trail that led me from lighthouse to lighthouse along a gorgeous coastline, a trail reduced to pond-sized mud puddles in many places, some as deep as my hip. I laughed so much during those 18 miles, even as I struggled up countless hills and down slopes covered in loose rocks.
That run, more than any other, made me realize something. Perfect conditions are nice: a flat, fast course, perfect weather, aid stations or other pit stops, fresh legs, etc. Perfect results are nice, too: a well-run race, at an ideal pace, with perfect form, etc. But they don’t necessarily add up to the perfect run. The perfect run is more than the sum of its often imperfect parts. Indeed, I think the imperfections can make a run great.
It was the wind and the rain today that reminded me of my favorite run. Not because it was windy or rainy that day on Brier Island (though it was, as usual, pretty foggy), but because those imperfections today made the run so much fun, even if I wasn’t particularly fast. As much as rain can put a damper on things, I also find that I often have a lot of fun on rainy day runs.
That being said, you won’t find me complaining if this storm we’re in the middle of doesn’t stick around until morning.