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Fear need not apply

Fear need not apply

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Ugh, apparently I managed to screw things up on this little corner of the internet last week; it seems that I didn’t save my post (or something), which makes it look like I missed a week of writing for the first time since last summer. Dang! No worries: I just republished (or published for the first time, I guess?) last week’s post, so consider this one a bonus … or something. Anyway. Certainly no one cares about this as much as me.

Training has been going well for Big Sur and Mountains to Beach. I am having a lot of fun and am enjoying the grind. Right now, it doesn’t look like I’ll have a lot of racing opportunities before The Big One — kinda like how it unfolded last year, just due to weekend commitments between now and then — but that’s okay. I’ll figure it out. It’s not the end of the world.

Running can become fairly monotonous if we let it. It’s super easy to run the same routes, and the same paces, at the same times of day, on the same days of the week over and over again. Aside from being boring as hell and predictable (which, unfortunately, is something that we have to think about trying to avoid for fear of creepers and stalkers), that type of running is pretty self-limiting. 

That’s not to say that every run needs to be otherworldly awesome and life-changing or anything like that, but there’s something to be said for variety. Different routes, different training partners, different speeds: keeping things spicy can make what can otherwise be a tedious process much more enjoyable (on a completely different level). 

all smiles! so happy that the timing worked out and we all ran into each other Sunday morning. The ranger wouldn’t let us in the main entrance, so Plan B it was.

I think that’s why I like marathon training. At its heart, it’s just a lot of running, yes, but it’s also a lot of different types of running. It’s pretty easy to squeeze in a fair bit of variety each week; it’s rare that I repeat myself. 

I find all of this extremely liberating. When I don’t run the same thing twice, it’s pretty hard to compare one day’s results to another. It forces me to focus on the run I’m in right here, right now, and completely immerse myself and my energies in it. I used to get so in my own head about my workouts — or really, anything that wasn’t an easy run — and it definitely lessened the enjoyment aspect of training. I was constantly comparing to the shape I was in last year, last month, whatever or the shape I **wanted** to be in.  I was afraid that I wouldn’t measure up, and yeah… failure’s not flattering, as NFG reminds us.

These days, all I care about is the run I’m in the throes of doing. It removes the fear element of the equation and replaces it with curiosity and an openness to the experience, which IMHO is far, far more enjoyable and helps make the marathon training process more enriching.

say hello to my non-track track that I use when it’s a nice, sunny day and I don’t want to people-dodge 329782120 people in the park. No fear necessary.

There’s a lot of emotion involved in marathon training, to be sure, but fear needn’t be part of it. 

Two years

Two years

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How January is already behind us and that fewer than 100 days stand between my first marathon of the year and me is mind-boggling. January brought with it a solid month of training, with a handful of days off (most of them while we were in the Dominican Republic with family at the beginning of the month). Since school and life as usual resumed earlier in the month, everything seems to be rolling along at its usual frenetic pace. 

January: ~209 miles; ~10,200′ vert; lots and lots of smiles (PC: Janet)
gang’s all here four time zones away!

In recent history, the end of January/beginning of February transition always leaves me feeling a bit unsettled — equal parts hyperaware and uneasy, like I’m constantly searching for something.  It was on February 4th, two years ago, that I had a stroke out of seemingly nowhere.

To this day, it’s still such a bizarre thing to talk about when it comes up in conversation because the topic brings with it an onslaught of questions that I don’t necessarily feel like entertaining. 

All I can say — rather unhelpfully — is that weird shit happens every single day of the year, to people all over the world, and sometimes without a lot of reason or explanation. On February 4th, 2018, something weird happened to me. That said, without question, I was one of the extremely lucky ones. 

The fragility, sanctity, and gift of life is something that I think has always been at the forefront of my mind, in some capacity, thanks to the media that I regularly consume. Even still, since having that major health emergency two years ago — as well as the truly life-changing experiences of being pregnant, giving birth and raising children — at the risk of sounding super crunchy, there are so many times now in my day-to-day life where I often wish I could somehow capture a moment or feeling forevermore.

Breathing it in isn’t enough; I want to bottle it.

I feel it when I run, regardless of pace or distance, but especially on those special days that Csikszentmihalyi talks about, when it all just flows, and there’s no stopping or limit imaginable. As a runner in my mid-30s now, who has been doing this long stuff for over a decade, I have more mileage and speed in my legs than I could have ever imagined when I began it all in earnest in 2007. Lindsay Crouse’s recent NYT opinion piece really resonated with me (and with so many others), and like she said, there are runs that happen where I finish and all but let out a HELL YEA! I JUST DID THAT! because I’m in disbelief at what my body just produced. Not knowing the end limit of my potential is really exciting and is enough to get me out the door each day to strive.   

I feel it with my children, even in the most inane circumstances of our day-to-day. The best way I can describe it is that sometimes I watch them talking to me — and I hear them, and I see their mouths moving — but it’s as though I’m watching from above. I am just in utter amazement that we created these two beings and that they are growing every day and figuring out the world in their own way, but they still need us in ways that they can’t always describe or ask. I am immeasurably proud of them for who they are becoming as individuals, and watching it unfold some days all but takes my breath away.

I’ve heard it said before that having children is like having your heart and soul on the outside, or something like that, and man, that’s right. Raising children is truly harder than any job I’ve ever had or degree I’ve ever earned. That said, it’s so deeply gratifying (and frustrating at times, of course) that I swear that I can feel it on a cellular level. 

Wanting to freeze time to capture a moment and feeling isn’t limited just to running or to my kids, of course. There are so many instances with my husband, with my own parents and siblings and in-laws and family members, and with my friends where, when we all part to go our own separate ways, the feeling that I have in my chest is just indescribably satisfying.

The shit-eating grin marks and crow’s feet lines just get deeper; I’m okay with that. 

This is all getting way more crunchy and embarrassing than I was going for — my bad — but I guess given the experience that I had two years ago and what I could have had, it’s damn near impossible to not be a little (a lot) reflective at this time of year.

Waking up each day grateful to have woken up at all and to be given another day of life is enough. 

I am one of the supremely lucky ones.