My wife has been training to run a big race coming up.  A Ragnar trail relay.  For those who are unfamiliar with it, you get 8 people together (on her team anyways, there are crazies with less), and you each run 3 trails.  An 8.4 mile trail, a 4 mile trail, and a 3.1 mile trail. When it’s your turn, you’re running, when it’s not, you’re sleeping, along with your team and other runners, in the basecamp they’ve setup.  The relay goes 24 hours a day until it’s done.  It’s legit.

Well, in training, my wife has been running and doing some additional training.  She ended up pulling a muscle in her back.  She still has a few weeks, and I’m sure that she’ll make a recovery in time to run the race, but it’s still a bummer, so close to the race, after she’s been training so hard.

Anyways, I went into problem-solving mode last night, and decided to tell her that she needed to take it easier than she had been, that she needed to not work, and that she may need to pursue other therapies to help her run the race.  She didn’t take so well to this.

I realized afterwards (like I usually do), that I was not being a positive support for her when she needed that the most.  Her own head was already swirling with doubt and troubles.  She’s fully capable of doing what she needs to run this race.  What she needed from me was positive reinforcement, not ideas to further complicate her own psyche.

I plan to fill our conversations with positive thinking, and positive reinforcement.  I think that filling her with those feelings will help her to heal faster than trying to list people and things that she needs to be considering.

It’s not just about the race, it’s about the entire experience, and it should be a positive one for her.