Reverb 13 · Prompt 3 · Brave

#Reverb13 is a prompt-a-day series for the month of December that is meant to give participants the chance to reflect on the past year and take the opportunity to write down some hopes for the coming year.

Prompt 3: What was the bravest thing you've done in 2013?

I rarely feel Brave, because Television tells me that Brave Is Riding Your Trusty Steed Toward The Horrible Dragon, and The Internet Says Brave Is Fighting A Terrifying Disease For Which There Is No Cure.

But Television and The Internet have their version (neither of which are Wrong), and I have mine.

Some days, Brave is calling an angry parent who is blaming you for her child's failure to submit an assignment.  Some days, Brave is going to the grocery store the day before A Major Holiday.  Some days, Brave is simply getting out of bed.

After my ordeal with shin splints, I was terrified to run my first race of the year, a 10K.  But 1) I had already signed up, and 2) it was for a cause important to not one but two dear friends, and while they were both walking the 5K portion, I was going to run that damn race, come hell or high water.

I can assure you that my technical shirt and my compression sleeves matched, so I was Prepared.

I'm not a fast runner, and the fear that my shin splints would return have slowed me more this year.  And that Fear was along for the ride for this First Race Back.

So, the night before, in true Kat fashion, I wrote this on my arches:

I am the tortoise; fear is the hare.

Fear was out in front that morning, but I was still in it.

When I got frightened that I wouldn't be able to finish the race, I zeroed in on that sentence, and repeated it, again and again and AGAIN, until I was out of the proverbial woods.

For me, putting one Saucony-clad foot in front of the other this year has been My Bravest Thing.  I am still terrified that I will gracelessly injure myself (imagine a slow motion trip over the curb and getting entangled in the hound's leash; that's how I figure it'll go down), but I still head out the door and step off with my left foot.  It's the stronger one.