Slow and Steady Wins the Race

Aesop was a liar!  Ok not entirely, so hear me out.

When I was a child I loved reading Aesop’s Fables.  These were the tales that taught us poorly behaved children valuable life lessons.  The story of The Tortoise and the Hare was one that always stuck with me.

Since I’m not in the mood to summarize this fable, let’s hear from Wikipedia

“The story concerns a hare who ridicules a slow-moving tortoise who challenges him to a race. The hare soon leaves the tortoise behind and, confident of winning, takes a nap midway through the course. The tortoise gets tired but he keeps going. When the hare awakes, however, he finds that his competitor, crawling slowly but steadily, has arrived before him.”

Thanks, Wiki.

Ultimately we learn the valuable lesson that with perseverance we will ultimately win and that we should never give up in the face of failure.

Now, I partially agree with this.  I do believe that one should never give up before attempting a task (this is something I have been trying to convince myself for a long time).  I also believe that slow and steady is sometimes the best option.

Yesterday I was determined to pull in another 3 miles since my self proclaimed “I kissed two miles goodbye” speech.  I was also determined to beat my time from the day before.  I am a very competitive person- especially with myself.  I began my run at 6.0 on the treadmill, a speed that I had never before started at.  After the first mile I knew it was time to drop down so I lowered the speed to 5.5.  I ran it out for a little while until I had to drop it down to 5.0 before the end of the second mile.  So instead of my 3 fast miles, I ran 2 miserable miles.

Moral of the story?

Well, today I ran MY FIRST EQUIVILENT OF A 5K at 5.0 the whole time.  A lesson was learned.  Could I have gone faster? Maybe.  Sometimes it’s OK to slow down and look at the big picture.  What am I trying to accomplish?  At times I’m so concerned with being competitive against myself that I push myself and lose the race.

Would I win a 5K against some zealous rabbit, no.  Definitely not. But there is some truth to these stories. As long as the fables aren’t the same ones teaching little girls to wait for a prince to rescue her (ladies, be i-n-d-e-p-e-n-d-e-n-t do you know what I mean?), I guess they’re fine in my book.

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