It has been a long time since there has been a post on this blog. I suppose the two authors have found themselves busy or pulled in other directions. Yet our feet have still been out there pounding the pavement or trails, so why not do a little writing about it?
There is a quote in the movie Chariots of Fire when Eric Liddle's character says, "Where does the power come from to see the race to its end? It comes from within." I have always enjoyed this quote even though he says it as a person running a short 200 meter distance. Maybe a post for another time. For today, this quote hits me sideways because the past few years offered me so little internal motivation. The power was not coming from within. I have always been significantly motivated by having a team around me, so the finding and setting goals as an individual 40 something-year-old person on their own is less than motivating for me. I think that is the best way to describe my own self-analysis, but ask me again next week and I might say something else!
So it was interesting when around October of last year a runner friend from Memphis proclaimed he was going to try to qualify for the Boston Marathon. He was seeking someone to meet him at the marathon he had chosen to run and help him push through to the end. This was my kind of running quest. Someone outside of myself, a teammate so to speak, needed some assistance. Personal evaluation left me questioning if I still had the juice to train for a sub 3 hour marathon. I was slightly relieved when he said at his age he only had to run a 3:20, but then reality sinks in as you also know the faster the better for getting in. Faster is always better!
I started my training. It was odd training and different from previous marathons I had trained for in the past. The kids and my current schedule persisted as ongoing challenges and I also simply refused to do the same amount of mileage as in the past. I decided I would slowly build up my long run, per the normal training, but everything else would be more by the seat of my pants. Most of my training was done with a baby jogger and pushing one or both of my children. This meant seeking out the flattest part of my mountainous community to run along the river for any hope of drilling some faster paces into my legs. The details of how the rest of it went are the same monotonous ins and outs that we all face when training for a marathon, but the fun part that came along with wanting to help a friend was... fear or anxiety or something along those lines.
Turns out that whatever feeling I was getting was very good for my running. Any time I would start a longer run or one of my faster training sessions, some small part of me would begin to feel nervous that I would not be ready when the time came. Then my legs would speed up and I would find myself having some great runs. How strangely bizarre it was to welcome anxiety into some aspect of my life and see healthy results! It brought with it a certain type of joy I had not felt while running in some time. This in turn enabled me to feel more confident about planning certain runs and pushing myself more than I otherwise might have done.
The sad part of this story is that I was not able to physically join my friend for the day of his run. That pesky complicated life ended up winning out and keeping me watching his performance this past weekend on the phone. I hoped my runs on Strava had helped him along the way some but in the end, even if we have a person running next to us, a person is left to their own struggle on race day. The marathon takes who it will and seems to have no discrimination when it comes to ruining the dreams of many a runner. My friend ran a qualifying time and I hope it is fast enough to send him to Boston a year from April. He persevered and ran the hard miles all on his own. Kudos to my friend.
Then yesterday hit and it was my first run post his marathon. What, if anything, I wondered would motivate me as I ran that first mile. Nothing sprung to my mind and I thought the run would be slow and uneventful. But something of my friend's pursuit still lingered and my body is in better shape than it has been in a couple of years thanks to him. The legs started moving a little more quickly. Beep. I look down and see 7:22 pace for mile two. Well that's 43 seconds faster than my first mile. Beep. 7:13. Ok, well I guess we are going to do something today. Beep. 7:11. Then my mind is into this game too and realizes we have to negative split the next mile under 7 minutes. Beep. Beep. Beep.
I finished my run and I now look back over what I wrote here today. Maybe the power to finish the run does come from within even when it needs outer inspiration. I spent last night mentally eyeballing the quick Strava segments from my run with jealous thoughts. I revisited my plan for what run will come next and thought wishfully about my long-term plan for my next marathon abroad. It seems there are always plenty of inspirations to get those feet a moving, but sometimes it takes a friend asking for an assist to help shake off the cobwebs (even when you fail to support them as you had hoped). So thank you my friend. And for now I'll sit down to clarify those other little goals that are popping up to keep fueling the machine and holding back all those running demons.
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