Most Wednesday nights, our running group meets at the high school track for #WorkoutWednesday. I haven’t consistently worked out on the track in years and I just love stepping onto the spongy all-weather track and the scent of sun-baked rubber floating in the air. (Did you know synthetic rubber tracks are also called tartan tracks? Gotta love the pseudo reference to Scotland!!) It brings back fond memories of killer track workouts at Villanova. Sometimes I swear our coach was trying to kill us.
Yesterday I did mile repeats and found my pace always waned a second or two on my third lap. Doubt crept in. I thought, “Can I really finish?” and “Oh my gosh, I’ve got to do another interval at this pace. What the heck am I doing out here?”
Then I translated my intervals to writing and the sagging middle. Where the middle portion of the story gets weighted down with minutia or back story or stuff that doesn’t really matter. Where I’m full of doubt – questioning the direction of the story, the motivations of my characters (and myself) and trying to convince myself that I can get to THE END. So what does writer girl do? Exactly what runner chick does – finish the interval. Take a recovery lap, then try to run the next one harder and faster. Push through the pain of that third lap and get to THE FINISH LINE. The End. 
