Dear Readers,
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This week’s check-in post is a couple of days late. Why? Because I had a half marathon on Saturday. I thought “I’ll just write it after. Endorphins will make me funny, and I will surely have some brilliant insights over the 13.1 miles to share with my wonderful readers.” Obviously, that did not happen. Much eating, limping, and sitting on couches did happen. Why not send out a post on Sunday, you ask? Because I was recovering from Saturday. I still am.
I am not an athlete. I did not play sports in high school. In fact, I have memories of trying to skip school the day of the mile. (All your classmates chilling at the finish line while you have one more lap to go is not a charming experience). I started running on my own in high school to take care of my health. As a writer and an artist, I spend a lot of time in my head, and I found that exercising keeps my mind in check. It is so effective that when I was in college if I sounded depressed on the phone, my mom would ask, “When was the last time you ran?” Inevitably it had been a week or more.
Preparing for a half marathon takes months of training to get your body into shape so that you have the necessary physical and mental endurance. Training plans with various methodologies scale up the runs so that your body gets stronger. I started preparing for this half marathon in May. There is no way I could have run 13.1 miles without all the shorter runs over the last five months. However, the last half marathon I did was five years ago, and I noticed my time was not as good now as it was then. I thought about why that might be, and realized I trained much harder five years ago.
My point is this: training feels endless, but the evidence of the effort for all the days you took to prepare, shows up on race day. Yes, there is a buzz from running with all the other racers, and the encouragement from the volunteers handing out water and cheering at the end makes a HUGE difference. At the same time, your body and mind can only go as far as you’ve trained them to go in all the days leading up to the race.
I’ve experienced this as both a writer and an artist. When I was first developing a consistent writing practice, I petered out after an hour. The longer I kept at it, over time, the better I became. I spoke to a painter recently who told me that when she returned to her craft after two decades away (raising a family), it took her years to get back to a place of proficiency. The Polish pianist Ignacy Jan Paderewski said,
“If I miss one day of practice, I notice it. If I miss two days, the critics notice it. If I miss three days, the audience notices it.”
Practice and consistency makes a difference. To me this is incredibly encouraging because it means all the work I do in the quiet, when there’s no one cheering me on (Yeah! You write that word! Look at you polish that sentence!), matters. It’s also motivating when I don’t like what I’m producing (if you keep showing up, you will get better).
I don’t know what marathon you’re running in life right now, but I’d like to give you a cup of water (or Gatorade) as you jog by:
You’re doing so great. Don’t give up.
Running partners help. Find a community to run with, people who will encourage you, and whom you can encourage on the long road to race day.
There’s no point comparing yourself to the people passing by, or whom you are passing. Their stories are not yours, and your challenges are not theirs.
Don’t skip the training. Show up for the smaller runs. They matter, even when they feel like they don’t.
Be kind to yourself, walk when you need to.
Go outside.
The race this Saturday was utterly gorgeous: a fresh morning on the cusp of fall in the hills and woods of Connecticut, next to a river. All the health benefits aside, being outside alone was worth the run.
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