{"id":262,"date":"2020-05-24T14:46:43","date_gmt":"2020-05-24T13:46:43","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/everydaymagic.xyz\/blog\/?p=262"},"modified":"2020-05-24T14:46:43","modified_gmt":"2020-05-24T13:46:43","slug":"redefining-best","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/everydaymagic.xyz\/blog\/2020\/05\/24\/redefining-best\/","title":{"rendered":"Redefining “Best”"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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On Friday, I ran a half marathon. It wasn’t an official event. I didn’t get a medal. I didn’t even really want to do it: I was feeling weak, and tired, and just a little bit grumpy. The weather was also not in my favor: while it was warm-ish and sunny, it was also incredibly windy. I knew that if I went out it would be tough going, and I’d be slow.<\/p><\/div>\n\n\n\n

I did it anyway.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

There were a couple of reasons for this: first and foremost, I wanted to “eat my frog”\u2013that is to say, I wanted to get something unpleasant done so that I could properly enjoy the rest of my long weekend. (My employer had given us Friday off, making this a 4-day weekend.) This was going to be a hard run regardless of when it happened, so why not get it out of the way, instead of worrying about doing it later? I knew that scheduling would be tricky, but finally decided on Friday, so I could recover for a day or so before meeting a friend for a walk.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The other reason I wanted to do this was because I’ve been training for it for a while. One of my friends signed up for a half-marathon back in January, and I decided to do the same. It was partly to give her moral support, but it was also to encourage me to get back into running. Moving, and being sick for a while derailed my training, and the event was canceled. But I wanted to honor the training I had already done (and challenge myself!) so I decided to do the half just for the sake of doing it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

If we’re measuring by time alone, the outcome was predictably poor. This was, by a good 12 minutes, my worst half-marathon time\u2013and that’s just if we measure measured<\/em> activity time. My watch auto-pauses if you stop moving, so it was probably much worse than that. However, once I got home\u2013and stopped laughing about the idea of shooting for a “personal worst”\u2013I started to wonder if maybe I was looking at the wrong thing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

There’s a comic strip by Jef Mallett called Frazz<\/em> that often has a philosophical bent to it. This strip<\/a> in particular has had an impact on me since I saw in 16 years ago:<\/p>\n\n\n

\"Frazz,<\/a>\n
Frazz, by Jeff Mallett, 18th July, 2004<\/figcaption>\n<\/figure>\n\n\n

Looked at from the framework of “best means most sense pleasing” Friday’s half-marathon was a smashing success. While my body wasn’t super happy to be running, I wasn’t in a lot of pain or short of breath. The temperature was just about perfect, and I kept smelling all sorts of lovely things, like flowers, fresh-cut grass, and clean air. And the scenery was amazing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"
I will take this over random Santa Monica neighborhoods and rock bands any day.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
\"\"
It was a bucolic run.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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I’ll confess, I thought Rivendell would be fancier.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

All in all, I think the run was a good one. And while it wasn’t my fastest half-marathon, I think it was definitely my favorite. And it gave me food for thought: Where else am I measuring the wrong thing as a metric for “best”?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

How about you, friend? Any areas where your “best” should maybe be accounted something different?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

On Friday, I ran a half marathon. It wasn’t an official event. I didn’t get a medal. I didn’t even really want to do it: I was feeling weak, and tired, and just a little bit grumpy. The weather was also not in my favor: while it was warm-ish and sunny, it was also incredibly… Continue reading Redefining “Best”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":268,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[6,7],"tags":[55,42,12],"class_list":["post-262","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-general_life","category-life_philosophy","tag-frazz","tag-philosophizing","tag-running"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/everydaymagic.xyz\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/05\/farm_2.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/everydaymagic.xyz\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/262","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/everydaymagic.xyz\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/everydaymagic.xyz\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/everydaymagic.xyz\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/everydaymagic.xyz\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=262"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/everydaymagic.xyz\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/262\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":272,"href":"https:\/\/everydaymagic.xyz\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/262\/revisions\/272"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/everydaymagic.xyz\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/268"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/everydaymagic.xyz\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=262"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/everydaymagic.xyz\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=262"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/everydaymagic.xyz\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=262"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}