If you aim for a lifetime of running, you will hit bumps on the road. Heck, let's be honest: You will hit something that looks like Mount Everest, and on the back side a gulf as deep as the Grand Canyon. The challenges we each encounter are uniquely ours, but they will come. We all have good years and bad. Shift happens...

Life requires us to make adjustments, to change course. Some years, when the waters of your life are calm and you feel a sense of control at the helm, you'll race hard, and hope for personal bests. Other years, beset by a perfect storm of turbulence, you'll have to settle for less. That's okay. Less is still something; just don't surrender and abandon ship.