Beating Bob in One Easy- or Rather Agonizingly Difficult- Step

At the far end of the winding, hill ridden, cattle field lined country lane called Tonzi Road in Amador county, there is a collection of comingled brush, a good portion of which is poison oak. Its name is Bob. Nearly every day Bob taunted me. Ha Ha Bob would say as I ran up the hill toward him huffing and puffing like an elephant in labor.
You're walking. Again. Bob would laugh.
You'll never run further than a block, let alone all the way to the top of the hill.
Bob was located just past the top of something I tried very hard not to call "the hill of impending doom." Every day since I had decided to run a half marathon I had run the mile down the hill, and the mile almost back up. I would stop short of the crest of the hill. My formerly tar filled lungs burning, my legs feeling almost as solid as a pair of pipe cleaners. A bit recovered I would walk the walk of shame past the top of the hill of impending doom and hear the almost-sound of Bob the comingled poison oak bush laughing his non-butt off at me.
Five days a week. For a month. If I wasn't too deadly allergic to poison oak to get within 5 feet of it without turning into the stay-puffed marshmallow man I'd have set Bob on fire.
But every day I would get to the burning-lung-pipe-cleaner-leg phase and I would decide I could no longer take so much as one step and then I would do something that completely defied all possibility. What I did required superhuman strength. It was beyond comprehension. It was less likely than a duck billed platypus and more impossible than an anti-gravity suit.

I couldn't do it.
There was no way.
I was convinced.
And then I pushed all that out of my mind. Lifted my foot off the ground.
And
Took
Another
Step.
Just like that. I went one step further than I ever dreamed I could.
One step closer to the top of the hill of impending doom. And doom did not arrive.
And the next day I took yet another step closer. And the day after, too.
And within a mere 3 weeks I was doing the full 2 mile distance. At the bottom of the hill I added an extra mile. And at the top. And within another month I was running, not walking, back to the end of the road, and up to the top of then hill. Past the top of the hill to the scrubby, knob cone pine. Past that to the gnarled, rabbit ear shaped fence post. Past that to the "Trespassers Will Be Shot," sign (and they say we country folk are so sweet and hospitable). Past that to.... To Bob. And Bob was not laughing now.
Ha Ha. I would chortle every time I ran past Bob. Even and especially the day I ran all the way up the hill of impending doom, past Bob, up Mount-Not-Enough-Explatives and collapsed in a heap in front of my car. Between heaving, huffing and puffing I spared just enough breath for a MWAAAhahahahahahaaaaa! Take... Gasp.... That.... Huff.... Bob!
And that was the day I ran out of road. I had achieved my first goal of running 6 miles within a mere two months. Up and down hills. Past obstacles. Over dried creek beds and beyond the great, debilitating mental block known as Bob the comingled poison oak bush.
I ran that 6 mile stretch until I could do it in an hour. And then I decided I needed a real challenge and mapped out a rout with real hills and which would allow my runs to expand from six, to eight, to twelve, to... Eventually all the way to 26.
"I've hit an impasse. I can't get any further."
She was stuck at three miles. She would never get past three miles. The 13.1 she had committed to at the beginning of our sessions together was not getting any closer. It was getting further away. She would put her training plan and her anti-pronation running shoes and her three sizes too small run skirt all in a giant pile and set fire to it!
"Burn it all?" I suggested.
"Burn it all!" She tried and failed to resist laughing.
We had gone round and round on the subject of burn-it-all mentality.
I can't do exactly what I set out to do, exactly the way I want to, without any hitches in my perfectly lain plans so I'm am going to scrap it ALL and forget it and get a sack full of marshmallows and a six pack of beer and gain back whatever I've lost and never, never get up off my couch again until someone comes and lifts me off with a forklift. An industrial sized forklift.
"One step." I reminded her. "One step more than you did today. One bite of food less than you ate yesterday. Already you're way ahead of where you yesterday, miles ahead of where you started."
Her face did that thing people's faces do when, if they were cartoon characters a little balloon would appear over their foreheads like an x-ray showing all the little cog-wheels clinking and clanking into motion.
If you take one more step today than you did yesterday, and one more step tomorrow than you do today, then how long will it be before the steps add up to 13 miles?"

Clink. Clank.
"I can tell you because I know for a fact. From where you are now? About three months." I knew because I had already walked down that road. Or rather run up it huffing and puffing like a gimpy big bad wolf.

Clink. Clank.

"Meet me out on Tonzi Road." I looked at my watch. There was just enough time before sunset. "I want to introduce you to my friend Bob."
Whole Health Renovation Specialist
209-740-7898

"I am forever striving to manifest things the way I would like them to be. In the mean time the greater challenge is to cope with the way things are." -Me