DNF..
For athletes it means...
Did Not Finish.
Look it up on Google and you find..
Did not find.
Does not function.
and my personal favorite...
Down and floundering.
For me it means none of those.
If I was feeling more creative right now I'd come up with a great acronym, better than
Didn't Necessarily Fail.
So, I DNF'd,
as did roughly 40% of the field.
I stopped because I was afraid from the extreme winds.
When I was 25, I probably would not have stopped, I'm 52 now and with age comes some, if little, wisdom.
When I made the decision to drop there were tears,
for a few minutes.
I have never quit before,
and
for a couple minutes I felt bad.
But very quickly I felt even better about myself than sometimes when I finish an event.
Making smart decisions is as much a part of endurance sports as anything else.
I know now that I have set the bar high enough to really challenge me and that has me crazy inspired going into my next block of training before my next event.
DNF is better than DNS many people say.
But only if by DNF you learn and grow.
DNF is not a bad thing.
DNF may mean that you have really started to challenge yourself and your limits.
