The Disneyland Half Marathon weekend is over.  I did it.  I completed two more runDisney races and earned three more medals.  And it was rough.  The heat was excruciating.  I ran out of water.  Twice.  My friend who signed up to do the race with me was able to keep a faster pace so I let her go on without me.  So somewhere around mile 7, I ran alone.  All the way to the end.  Something else I didn’t expect to do.  It was hard.

My first half marathon was a runDisney race.  It was the day after my birthday and the weather was considerably cooler.  Comfortable.  The entire race was magical.  It’s the first time that I ran entire race while smiling.  The expo was relaxing.  Everything about the experience was so wonderful, that I was hoping to recreate that experience for the Disneyland Half Marathon weekend.

After this weekend, I realized that for some experiences, you just can’t recreate that magic.  Some experiences live in the history of your life just as magical moments.  All of the stars and the planets and the angels align and make that one thing so special.  Like my favorite Dave Matthews Band concert where they played all of my favorite songs.  Now every time I go to another one of their concerts, I expect to have that same experience.  It has not happened since.

I guess what I’m trying to say is, maybe I should look at my experiences differently.  Maybe I should stop trying to recreate the magic and work more on creating new experiences. There are things to be learned.  Like after running in the humidity and the heat this weekend, maybe I can endure a race at Walt Disney World to get that coveted Coast to Coast medal.  Maybe I can even push myself even more.  Sometimes I don’t know what I am capable of and I’m afraid to find out.