I used to be of the “DNF or die” mindset. Not literally, but I walked to the finish line with an injury or illness a lot in my career and I’m proud of that. At 9Trails I had two broken ribs, at Pine to Palm 100 I walked 100 miles with a crack in my knee cap, and I’ve slogged it in after puking in the early miles more than I can count. Again, I am super proud I made it to all those finish lines but they came at a cost and prolonged recovery, sometimes by an entire year. I probably could have finished CCC this August. I could have scooted down on my butt and crawled (literally) my way to a slow finish. But instead, I made the professional decision to save it for another day. That was hard, maybe even harder than finishing would have been, but because of it I could get treated quickly and was running again in 2.5 weeks. Last week, I ran over 80 miles with a successful workout and several of those runs were completely pain free. I’m going to be able to pay my CCC fitness foreword to another start line this season, and with more fire I would have had otherwise. There is a time an a place to gut out a hard fought finish. But I’ve also learned there is a time to cut your losses to stay healthy. I think I’ll probably have to learn this lesson over and over again, but for now I’m so grateful to have made that tough but mature call because I’m so so happy to be healthy enough to train for more hard things. #runhappy @carsonmagoon is a GD content machine @brooksrunning @brookswomen @garminrunning