The End

365 days ago, I registered for the Inaugural Star Wars Dark Side Challenge, resolved to make it my last race ever, and determined to finally PR my half marathon by running it in under two hours. I started this blog to document my progress and named it "Run to the Dark Side."

I didn't know a year ago exactly how appropriate my blog title was going to be.

Every day for seven months, I'd write about what my training for the day looked like, what I ate, how I slept, what I learned. I couldn't wait for my "Danielsan" moment... you know, "Show me 'wax on, wax off'," and holy shit, I know karate! Er... how to run... you know what I mean.

But there was no Danielsan moment for me.

And last April, what was supposed to be the best race of my life turned out to be the worst.

I should have probably put a nice, clean closure to the end of this blog back then but something kept me going for a little while longer. Because it wasn't all horrible. There was one time where I thought maybe I could be a healthy/normal human being, or this other time when I learned I DO have control over my food problems.

But despite these small breakthroughs, it feels like I'm trying to move a mountain, and progress looks like this:

It's especially tough to move mountains when sometimes I mess up and put the pebble back where I found it.

And there's nothing motivational about any of this. So I stopped making daily updates. Through it all, I can't help but feel that the real lesson to be learned from my story is as follows:

Just because you will it to be won't make it so.

Alright, I do know deep down inside that there can't be success without failure. Even one of my greatest heroes, Walt Disney, knew the pain of failure.

Will I run again? I've still got the Avengers half in November, so I can't hang up the running shoes yet. But my only goal for it at this point is to walk away from the race uninjured.

Will I write again? Perhaps. This isn't my first failed blog. Some of you have come with me from prior failed blogs, and I thank you for that. For those of you that are new, know that I won't send you back to any of the others - we only go forward from here. This blog will live on, collecting some cobwebs in the corner of the web, for at least the next two years that I own the domain... so if there's anything I've linked to that you might have found helpful, you may want to bookmark it directly.

Until the next project presents itself, you can follow me on twitter or snapchat for occasional updates, or email me anytime.

Thanks for running to the dark side with me.