The exercise trail where I run with my dogs is a dirt trail, covered at the top layer with a sandy earth mixture that contains some tiny little rock chips that promote drainage during the heavy rainfall we frequently get. Yesterday morning, as I was running, one of those tiny rocks got into my shoe.
Nudge.
Sure, I noticed it pretty quickly — it was pressing on the top of my foot, caught between the tongue of the shoe and my sock. But I didn’t do anything about it. I felt the rock, but it wasn’t exactly painful. Stopping to untie my shoe seemed at that point like a lot of effort. So I kept going.
Nudge.
Jab.
After a while, the rock shifted around in my shoe until it was bouncing around up near my toes. This was annoying. So I just kind of wiggled my big toe to kick the rock up to the very top of the shoe.
Jab.
Poke.
Poke.
But I didn’t actually stop to do something about the rock until it was underneath the sole of my foot and causing me actual sharp pain when I stepped on it. So I led my dogs off the path (checking first for squirrels, other dogs, and other runners coming up so that I could have a minute to adjust my shoe without the dogs getting too excited), loosened the lace, pulled the shoe off, and dumped out a tiny, tiny, tiny little pebble.
Relief.
Lacing up my shoe and getting back to our run took just a few more seconds. The whole adjustment took maybe a minute, maybe 90 seconds. I’d spent at least 15 minutes with the pebble impinging on my awareness, distracting me from other things I’d prefer to focus on during a run: the early morning light, the happiness of my dog pack, and the cadence of my breath.
What’s the pebble in your shoe? is it an email or a phone call you know you need to make? some piece of information you need to find out? a household repair to arrange?
What if you just took care of it, today, instead of putting it off until it really becomes too painful to avoid?