Whatever you do

My children know how to complete the phrase that I started with the title to this post. I learned it from my mother and passed it along to Mandy and Ben. I hope they do the same. The entire saying goes like this: "Whatever you do, do with all your might. Things half done are never done right."

It has been great guidance for my life, but it struck me last weekend that sometimes it is OK to go halfway. Sometimes halfway is far enough to give you a good look at something, to tell you it would be better to stop right there and regroup.

Mandy and I were walking a half-marathon when we agreed doing half of the half would be enough. (I like the irony of it -- the notion of doing a half-marathon was already sending a message that occasionally half can be the whole.) The rain was insistent as we approached the six-mile mark and a point in the 13.1 mile route that was close to the finish line.

We knew we could finish; we had done it in October, but we also knew we hadn't trained as we should have, and we both had busy days ahead of us. We took the shortcut over to the finish line to wait for Andy to cross, knowing he could run the full 13 miles in little more than the time it took us to walk half the distance.

Not finishing was the right decision this time, but not being able to cross the finish line ourselves helped to rededicate us to preparing for the next time. Mandy has dug out the training schedule we used a couple of years ago. It will be fun to follow it again with a slight modification: this time we'll be taking along the baby in his jogging stroller!