Santa Shuffle race report

Submitted by Sarah Diamond, @voxpax2

"Choices"

This is my third 5k run I have done this year. That in itself is a major accomplishment for me. As most of you know I have asthma; running was never apart of my life because it controlled me. I chose to change that. It’s people like Sean Astin who inspire us to make the change.

On December 1,  I ran the Salvation Army “Santa Shuffle” 5k, and while running/walking it (I mix the two in order to keep the asthma at bay) I had another epiphany. There are two routes you can run: the shorter 1K version or  the full 5K route. I had that shorter route staring me in the face saying “You could run me. I'm shorter, I’m easier to run. It wouldn’t be such an effort. I’m safer, I’m dryer then what your doing.”

I was running in the Vancouver rain and wind, and for those who don’t know it or understand it, it can be disheartening. We get it all the time, and sun isn’t our best friend around here. As I was running, I had the hard rain hitting me in the face, the wind biting my face which made it colder and the spray of the waves hitting me as well. I was drenched and cold, and because we were running along the Seawall, I had wave spray hitting me every few seconds. That easy route was looking more and more appealing every moment.

It was Sean, my fellow Captains and those who were tweeting along with the #LOTRLoyals marathon that made me realize I couldn’t take the easy route. Everyone kept tweeting things like:

“ You must keep going Frodo” 
“ I can’t carry it for you, but I can carry you!” 
“The whole speech Sam gives to Frodo is my favorite”

How can you run the easier route when you have people twittering inspirational stuff like that as you run? I couldn’t do it. I hit the #run3rd 1,2,3 concept all in one second. You all became my inspirational Sam as I ran. Thanks to all of you who participated in that event, you kept me honest and from that point on I was running for You.

Tolkien had it right, no matter how tempting it could be to take the easy route instead of the hard, sometimes you cannot get where you need to be by the easy route. You chose to struggle, you fought temptation. You could have turned back at any time but as you crossed that finish line, you chose to be better for yourself, and that was like running into Mordor and dropping that ring into the mountain.

So as I crossed that finish line, it was such a relief to know I didn’t take the easy route, I chose to take the wind and rain and waves at its worst and the worst was over for this event. I had made it with my honest self intact and I thank YOU!