after a good year of silence, i've decided to revive this here blog. i know no one reads it other than me - and maybe drew! - but i think it might be nice to start this record of my thinking and running again.
so here's the scoop:
we live in iowa city now, not chicago - though i do live in chicago once a week (long story). i have been running and, in fact, trained for chicago 2008, but i haven't run a marathon in over a year now. i've been busy passing prelims, starting a fellowship program, moving to iowa, doing my thing. now that all of that has calmed down, i'm ready for marathon #5 - the running fit trail marathon this april. the race is 16 weeks away, which means that today marks my first day of actual training: a three mile spin around the hood. despite the nasty cold/sinus thingy I'm fighting off, the run went off without a hitch - woo hoo!
more important than that actual three mile loop, though, is my attitude. it occurs to me that i've spent quite a few years trying to get running and, more specifically, the demands of racing, to bend to my will. i've tried to find a way to get through the training without really making room for the training. i've tried to rationalize that as long as i could check off those runs, i could work too hard, sleep too little, drink too much - in other words, i think i tried too hard to do things "my way." that seems to me, now, to be a pretty stupid way to do things, and i'm not entirely sure why that just now occurred to me.
maybe it's because things have finally quieted down. the insanity of the last year or two subsided this winter break and, when i was finally forced to sit with myself, in myself, for a few minutes, i realized that i was scared - absolutely terrified, in fact. i suppose most people are scared of something, but this realization - that i was scared of everything - shocked the hell out of me. i didn't take myself for the fearful kind. it took a few weeks after that to figure out just what i was scared of - or why - and here's what i came up with: the future! more specifically, a future that i want desperately to control.
once i figured that out, i realized that this fear was silly, ridiculous in fact. no one can control the future and trying to do so only makes you miserable. armed with that epiphany, i am going to try very hard to get out of the future and get into now. and what better time to do that, than as i embark on my training for my first ever trail marathon.
it's not that i'm running this marathon to "save my soul." i'm running this marathon to run it! and, for once, to give myself up to the training. to let go and let god as they say. or, in my case, since i'm a little wary of the whole "god" thing - i'm going to let go and let the running gods step in. i'm going to pledge to take this training seriously for the first time. to revel in it. to luxuriate in it. to quit trying to impose my will on it. to embrace my fear of the future and enjoy the 3 miles of today. to face the scary fear of actually trying my best at something and letting the world see what that "best" is.
this is it: my gift to myself in 2009. to give myself up to training. to take it seriously. to enjoy it. to make room for it. to give up controlling it. to surrender to it.
to let go. and to let the running gods in.
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