Extra faux, No pro
Pivoting is a challenge for me. Maybe for any athlete. We're driven, goal focused, determined. But looking back at the past few years, since Des blew threw, my body has been trying to pivot and I've been single tracking it. No, body, this is where we're going. You are a marathoner, you're going to get fit and race. But every time I'd call up Steph Bruce to start sharpening the training plan something would snap.
Then ... COVID. Which made its scary self extremely known during the broadcast of the Olympic Trials Marathon. 45 interrupted the race broadcast with news of our first deaths (just miles from me). My first grader was home days later. We didn't know she'd be home for a year. We didn't know any of us would.
In the first months, I focused on running, stacking my mileage, getting fit. All summer I barely missed a day despite also holding office hours starting 3:30am and managing the house, school, meals… Then (to only my surprise) tsunami scale waves of ennui crested and crashed, wiping out weeks of training. Landing me back on my SSRI so I could move without full body pain. So I could hold my head above the waves just enough to see and breathe. The waves continue. Weeks of motivation, weeks of extreme lead-tasting exhaustion.
Finally, this winter, a freak accident involving a piece of glass and an outpatient foot surgery landed me on the injured list for 5 weeks (actually I'm still there). In the stillness I could finally hear and absorb what my body and mind and sport were trying to tell me for the past three years. Running is mine forever, even if I’m never on another elite start list, even if I don’t make the 2024 Olympic Trials.
Running is part of me, it is a guiding principle, a mental health necessity, my quiet place, a primal need. It is my art, my friend, my body’s home. At 8 miles of 11 I always unlock at least one problem that has plagued me all week. It keeps me honest and out of trouble, it honors my body and spirit. It challenges me and holds me down.
I’d love to end it right there, but life isn’t this or that. There is still a voice who pipes up right about when I hit 30 miles a week and says, "but don't you know how good you could be at this? Isn’t it ‘sacrificing the gift’?You're not getting any younger. Throw it all in again! Let's run 2:39!"
I’m trying not to battle that voice, I let it speak its mind, it tells some true. Nothing is forever. But this step, and the next and the next they are running for the pure joy of it at best, or so that I don’t have to scream in my car and pillows (as often).