My latest half marathon was a Murphy’s law sort of event. Anymore, it seems to be standard protocol for me to feel run down in the days leading up to the event. Even after giving myself a proper taper and getting plenty of sleep throughout the week leading up to the race, my nerves drag down my immune system and I wind up with a sore throat, headache, and fatigue. Not quite the spring-in-my step feeling I envision myself having when I stand at the starting line. We’d decided to camp out on Madeline Island over the race weekend and I was weary about the quality of sleep we’d be getting so my husband had packed us our camping pads and a twin-sized air mattress. We debated sharing the mattress but knew, considering its size, that one of us would wind up on the ground. He was kind enough to offer the mattress to me and doubled our camping pads for himself. I tossed and turned throughout the night, thinking that the air in this mattress seemed rather lumpy and hard, and realized in the morning that it had gradually deflated to nothing but the bed of gravel underneath our tent. I was stiff and achy, with sore throat and feverishness in tow, but I changed into my running clothes and hopped in the truck. We were running late. That won’t surprise a large amount of people that know us well but this was not the day to be late. We were supposed to catch a shuttle from a parking lot to the starting line and after several discussions about it, I had gotten the impression that my husband was on top of this and knew just where to go. We pulled into town and as the truck slows and he carefully looks around, it hits me that he has absolutely no idea where he’s going and I lose it. I’m blaming him and he’s blaming me. We stumble into the correct parking lot only to find the last shuttle has left and he takes off running to the starting line. I’m rambling on behind him about the correct procedures to arriving at a race and he’s gleefully offering that this is a great warm-up for us. I consider tackling him right there in the street but look around and realize that we are surrounded by other runners doing just that. We get to the starting area with three minutes to spare, national anthem playing, and the man says, “I’m gonna run to the port-a-potty quick.”
My husband and I have never run together during a race but we’d realized the night before that his marathon pace would not be too much quicker than my half marathon pace and we might as well just run the first five miles together until my course looped back. I always feed off of the energy at the start of a race and felt even better having my husband and a group pulling me along. Those miles came easy but towards the end of the fourth mile, I was slowing down. Once the group was gone, it was completely up to me to do the race.
I started remembering my fatigue and the dull ache in my head, with clamminess and waves of heat coming over me. I focused on the other runners. There was a long stretch of the course where runners paralleled each other as some ran out and others came back in. At this part of the race, there were hundreds of strangers only beginning to get to work. I smiled and waved and cheered them all on and was boosted by their return of encouragements. We were in this together. We were going to reach our goals.
And then I turned a corner and the road opened up to a long stretch of isolation. The hundreds of runners turned to a handful and we were spaced out far enough that we couldn’t hear the rhythm in each other’s breathing or the drumming of our footsteps. My mind was at risk of wandering into self-doubt and negativity but I thought, “This is what I trained for.”
This moment right here. The moment where the spectators are long gone, where the support from competitors vanishes, where the road opens up and you see nothing but yourself and your goals and the space between them. I had worked hard to narrow that space. I’d spent months running up and down ravines to have it in me to be closer to my goal. Hours and hours of threshold, interval, and marathon pacing. I remembered the community back home that had helped me get here. The runners I had joined every week that pulled me along and cheered me on at the track. They were nowhere to be found on Madeline Island, but that kind of community sticks with you everywhere you go.
At every opportunity my brain took to focus on the pain and the doubt that I would get through this, I said to myself, “This is what I trained for.”
I finished the race with the biggest, brightest smile and tears in my eyes, conquering my goal time by four minutes. Life is defined by these moments. The moments where we survive the suffering and arrive at overwhelming joy. Where we learn to focus on the greater good in any situation, even as it feels like it is miles away.
I am learning to train for these moments every single day. Life is hard and full of moments that we won’t believe we are going to survive, but it also offers tools that can be instrumental in our ability to make it through the day. For me, I turn to building genuine relationships with people I can trust to help me when I’m in need and to inspire me to grow into something better. To church sermons that are the bricks laying a foundation I can stand on. To constant intake of positive, encouraging quotes from the countless writers and philosophers that have learned much from life and chosen to spread that knowledge. And of course, to the wonders of nature that light my soul on fire. Every step I’ve taken in nature has been a step away from pain. And while agony lives on, as it always will, I have moments to look back on that remind me of all that is good in our world and teach me about hope and faith. Sweeping views, waterfalls and rivers, crashing ocean waves and towering peaks above me, the greens of a tarn and the blues of a desert stream, paths winding through evergreens and across rolling meadows. It is said that the most beautiful places are the hardest to reach and there is no mistake in that. I think it may be true that the struggles we endure in life are there to make us chase us after life’s beauty.
So, get running.
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