Excuses are not awesome at all – Run through them

Zombies don't accept excuses

This morning as I was driving into work, it was pouring rain. As I approached my favorite stretch of road that cuts between a forest preserve and passes over the highway, I saw a man running – an older man, likely in his 60s. Let me remind you, its pouring rain. I drive past the man slowly and wonder does he want to get out of the rain? Did he begin running and get caught and is now too far from home? Is he so far that his only choice is to keep running?  I drove for another eighth of a mile before I got worried that this guy might catch pneumonia, and turned around to ask if he needed a ride*. I turned around and parked on the only bit of road that was large enough to be a proper shoulder. He approached, keeping his pace. I rolled down my window and he stopped, pushed a button on his watch, and smiled as I offered to drive him somewhere. He replied, “It started raining on Mile 1, and this is Mile 6. So…I’m going to keep going.” He smiled, thanked me for my kindness, pushed a button on his watch, and started running again.

I have no idea how many miles this man continued to run after we parted ways. But I do know that he was only 1 mile from home when it started raining.  And I met him – in the rain – 5 miles later.  I am certain that even the best of us would have considered turning around once the rain started. And of those, some would have turned around.  And we would have had a very reasonable excuse. But this man, knowing that there was far more road to travel forward than backward, kept going forward. For that, he is awesome.

*while it’s not relevant to the story, when I made the decision to turn around, I saw a big pretty rainbow. And when I turned to head back towards the runner, I saw another rainbow in the opposite direction. Rainbows are perfectly normal natural occurrences, but I’m still the sort of person who ascribes meaning to things like that.