Registration was this week for Disney’s Princess Weekend, and I was glad that the princess races didn’t include my favorite princesses. Nope, not Belle (the reader) nor Cinderella (the best music; Rodgers & Hammerstein). My favorite princess is not Disney at all. It’s Princess Winnifred from Once Upon a Mattress, adapted from Hans Christian Andersen’s The Princess and the Pea.
The reason I’m like the princess in the fairy tale is because I complain when things aren’t exactly the way I like them. In fact, I’m a lot like this character, too:
Maybe you remember that the princess in The Princess and the Pea was assumed to not be a princess, but then, because she couldn’t sleep on many mattresses with a pea under them, her future mother-in-law recognized her princess-ness.
No one is checking to see if I’m a princess, but one important aspect of marathon training is to let go of being a princess. You have to run when the weather bothers you. You have to run when you’re not in the mood. You have to run when you don’t want to, even if you haven’t gotten any sleep because one pea is under the many mattresses atop your bed frame.
One thing you often hear from runners is “I don’t/didn’t have time to train.” Here’s the thing: You have to train. You have to train even though it’s hot and humid. You have to train even though it’s raining. You have to train even though you’re in the middle of a great book and you would rather finish the novel than run.
In many ways, the race isn’t the hard work. The hard work is every run before the race. I realized after kind of half-assing my first Disney event (Springtime Surprise: 5K, 10K, 10-miler) was that if you don’t do all of the training, then it’s more likely you want do the race the way you want. I’m committed, this time, to all the training and the race itself is not as important.
This is an old song, but it’s my new favorite run tune.
yogadonna 
Leave a comment