So it’s official, I am a Tough Mudder Dropout. I wrote about the Mudder and prepping for it a couple months ago. In my head I’m now re-imagining a musical number “Tough Mudder dropout, you better go back to New York Sports Club!” complete with a number of women all covered in mud, some with scrapes and all with headbands, dancing all around me. And what’s worse is I told everyone in my office and all my friends so this is a very public dropping out of something I said I would do.

And the thing is, I’m glad that I didn’t do the Mudder. I’m really glad I trained for four months for it, as I got in the best shape of my life. But as the Mudder loomed closer, my husband sent me an article about a man who jumped into the “Walk the Plank” water obstacle and didn’t emerge, and in what may have been due to a slow rescue response, died. Then I started to really think was this worth it, I ran my first half marathon this year, and a bunch of smaller races. I got into amazing shape and was eating way better too. I have 3 kids and do I really need to be attempting an obstacle course in which I get electrocuted?

I trained just as hard mentally as I did physically. I mentally envisioned myself in the obstacle course, running through the beginning for miles and miles, swinging through the rings, crawling under wires and getting shocked, but in my mind, I kept going. And that’s just what I have to do in life too. My life is giving me enough of an obstacle course as it is. My equivalent of the Tough Mudder “Arctic Enema” has been 2 months of cold showers because we didn’t have gas service in our newly renovated house.

So maybe that mental grit I developed didn’t help me through an obstacle course, but maybe those morning visualizations helped me deal with the stressors of a house renovation, the crazy deadlines, 3 kids all whining for a glass of juice at the very same time. Maybe picturing myself covered in mud in a ditch while my best friend laughed, or Derek carrying me on my back, got me in the right frame of mind in the mornings to deal with my days. In the end I don’t feel much like a dropout at all. What I feel is appreciation for my best friend who pushes me way beyond my fears, and my husband who supports me in everything I do. And I feel even more than ever that it’s O.K. to try things out, to experiment a bit, and fail. In the dirty, gritty, muddy parts of life are where the beauty can be found as well.