The Starting Line is one of the many reasons I enjoy race days! Its a visual, visceral reminder that a new beginning is about to take place. Take the 3M Half-Marathon start line in the photo below. I snapped this shot just before being pushed under the arch by the 6700 runners behind

me eager to get underway back in January! The light that dapples the sign isn’t from the sunrise. Rather its from the flood lights set up to illuminate the starting corrals. You can see the amount of daylight by taking a close look at the top right corner of the image. See that steel blue poking color through the tree branches? Yep, it was barely dawn. A new day. A new adventure. A new start. And before the sun was even up!

When you go through significant loss, it can feel like life grinds to a halt. When Kristi died, I wondered how I’d be able to keep going. There were days where I just felt like I was turning in circles. Fear about the future can freeze you into inaction and/or open the door to depression. But life doesn’t stand still and you need to keep up with it, especially if you have children, processing and dealing with your grief along the way. Enter the starting line!

The Starting Line demands you deal with life in the present tense, the here and now. It calls you to focus on the immediate task at hand. When the horn sounds and the race starts, your

world collapses down to monitoring your physical performance. This monitoring is both mentally and emotionally taxing. When the body is fresh, you have to govern your effort and keep the throttle under control. As the race wears on you transition into mental pep talks and bracing against physical, emotional, and mental collapse as fatigue sets in.

Racing is provides wonderful discipline and training of the mind, body and spirit. But the start line is a demarcation that lets you know in a very simple way that you are moving forward. You are not stuck. Life is progressing, at least on some level. In fact, to get to the starting line required a decision and at least some training on your part.

Moving forward in life requires a similar decision. Its your choice as to whether you are going to tow the line each day or if you’re going to check out and stay lost and listless. Find a starting line near you and get signed up. You’ll be amazed at how good just crossing that starting line feels.