Your Mother Should Know

Now I will be the first to admit I didn't have the best relationship with my mother. We weren't especially close, and we spent a good deal of my teen years butting heads.
But. . . there are some things my mother got right.
One of them has to do with what she would call building character. Whenever there was a chore I didn't especially like--sweeping the floor, making a salad--my mother would invariably have me do that chore. "It builds character," she would say.
Well, lo and behold, now I apply that principle to my everyday, and I am a stickler about clean floors!! As for salad? I eat one nearly every day, one that I have spent 30 minutes making.
But it goes beyond keeping a floor clean and getting my veggies.
Many of you know that I am a dedicated exerciser--triathlon training is like a part-time job to me, one that requires great rigor and dedication and planning.
At the same time I am training for the Syracuse Half-Ironman triathlon, Sept. 19, I am also working toward a marathon, Oct. 17. As part of the training, I have had to eliminate "junk" miles from my running. Every run has a purpose--building speed, endurance and the like.
So that's why I found myself at the Baldwinsville track, at 5:20 a.m., in the rain this morning to do speedwork, the dreaded speedwork. It's the one aspect of training I really don't enjoy but that I find pays nearly immediate dividends--to race fast you have to train fast. Reminding myself I would be glad to have done the work, I went through my paces.
And what went through my head? My mother's mantra about character building. Making myself do something I don't especially enjoy to reap great reward. In the case of tri and marathon training, I guess you could say I have built a lot of character!
I hate to admit it, but in this case my mother was right.