I believe in always doing my best. That may sound nebulous but I liken it to my running. I run a lot of races. I’ve run over 150 half marathons in the last 10 years. In every race regardless of how I’m feeling, my level of training or lack thereof, the weather, or my mood, I endeavor to run the best race I can.
It was the last race he did, nine months later he passed away of a very virulent form of cancer which he hadn’t been aware of at the time. It was a tragic death of an inspiring runner and a good friend. I will always wonder what his PR would have been if he hadn’t stopped short. In the long run PRs don’t matter, but how we live our lives does. How many times do we just do enough and not our best, game the system?
Several years ago, as a newer runner, I ran with a very good friend who was older than me and a bit of a gamer. He like to game the system to always be getting just slightly better personal records, also called PRs, for his race times. It was February on a rolling, half marathon course, we were both about to get PRs by a significant margin. My friend tried to stop me before the finish line so we would just overcome our PRs. I ignored him and flew on to finish. It was a significant PR for me and I was over the moon.