[Mr. Miles, aka Feline psychologist extrodinare.]
“Success is not final, failure is not fatal; it is the courage to continue that counts.” – Winston Churchill
When I planned my 2019 season, I had such great hopes and strong goals for it. However, things have not gone as planned.
The year started out with not-so-fun medical and personal issues. But by mid-March, those were mostly resolved. And then the next shoe dropped — with me getting laid off (downsizing) from a company that I’d been with for almost 14 yeara. That threw a wrench into some plans, but I was able to regroup and tried to focus on qualifying for Nationals. After losing race opportunities to being unable to find guides / an unexpected monsoon, I found myself staring at a very short time frame to qualify for Nationals.
So headed into June, I knew what the score was and what I needed to do. And while I did everything I could to make a NQ time happen, it just didn’t come together.
After the DNF this past weekend, I was extremely disappointed. I lost both of my A races for the 2019 season because of if. Sure, I could have gone and raced PC Open. But after talking with my coach, that just didn’t make sense. What made more sense was to pull back, focus on fixing the issues and on moving forward. Even though these were two imiportant races, there is stilla HUGE chunk on my 2019 schedule. I am also working on trying to add a ‘replacement’ A race (Chicago) to it.
I’ve been able to make it through this frustraing first half of the year because of all of the people and organizations that support me. I am truly grateful to ALL of them, and their support has meant so much during these trying times.
To that point, the ‘pity party’ on Sunday post-race was short-lived (about an hour). What brought me out of it so quickly was realizing these several things (in order):
1) Yes, I lost both A races, but the season is not over.
2) The remainder of the season is an opportunity to fix these issues, and build towards the 2020 season.
3) I owe far too much to everyone who has, does and continues to support me to not push on. Short-term losses for long-term gains.
4) There are always going to be struggles and setbacks. It’s how you deal with them that will define you. And if you can’t deal with something ‘minor’ like this, HTF will you move forward?
The net result of all these conversations (some with the help of Mr. Miles) was that I refocused on the 2nd half of 2019 and did 2020 planning.
