Archive for June, 2015
A Lesson in Stillness
My greatest fear is that I will run out of time. That there isn’t enough, there won’t be enough to complete a project, call this person, prepare for that presentation. Write. Run. Walk my dogs. Vacuum the house, mow the lawn, run errands. Spend enough time with my family, boyfriend, friends.
Before they die. Before I do. Before, at least, the day, week, month, year ends.
I am constantly doing, always moving, even when I’m sitting still. It takes an enormous amount of energy to winnow away the extraneous noise resonating in my brain and to simply be present, to focus on the moment, the thing I’m doing now, without feeling the pressure of what comes next. When I run I get to that stillness fast. When I write I get there slower, but stay there deeper, longer. In most other hours, I have sprinkler head.
The weight is considerable. But when you live with something daily you don’t recognize it’s there. You forget the thorn in your side hurts until it’s removed and you experience the absence of pain.
Last week, I was laid out flat, sick for the first time in years. Thursday morning I could feel it coming, told my body to ignore it, I simply didn’t have time to be sick. By Thursday night, my body, in essence, flipped me off. I went to bed achy and ill, but set my alarm to get up and run, thinking I could will away whatever this was. I didn’t. I couldn’t. But I fought being sick and attempted to go about my day.
“When normal people are sick, they take a sick day,” my boyfriend said around 4pm.
(At least I think that’s what he said. It may have been, “Normally, when people are sick….”)
The rest of Friday night, I planted myself on the couch and lamented the time wasted by languishing in illness. Yet my boyfriend’s words struck a chord. Maybe there was something to it. When was the last time I’d taken a sick day? Not since I started working for myself in 2009. Even so, I can’t remember being sick enough to stay home when I worked for someone else.
What was wrong with me that I couldn’t relax, couldn’t just be?
For the next few days, I had no choice. But on Saturday afternoon, as I was sprawled on the couch napping, dogs stretched out on either side of me napping more soundly, I felt a strange contentment. A deep sense of peace.
Since I had crawled out of bed that morning, I hadn’t thought about work. Hadn’t thought about running or writing or cleaning my house. Wasn’t concerned about spending time with anyone but myself and my dogs. I wasn’t thinking about what came next, what was coming tomorrow. All that mattered was that moment, right where I was, doing what I was doing. Rather than seeing time as a raging river threatening to sweep me and all that mattered away, I saw it as a deep mountain lake, eternal. Still. I was at peace with the knowledge that what needs to get done will get done, that what needs to be will be.
I wish I could say I woke up well the next day, but I didn’t. Whatever I had lingered for over a week, and it wasn’t until yesterday that I began to feel like myself again. Only maybe a little more serene. All that needed to get done got done, and with ample time left over. For the week, for the moment, and for the first time in I can’t say how long, I am not afraid of running out of time. Strange how it took being leveled to see that there really is peace in stillness.
Read Full Post | Make a Comment ( 1 so far )Why I Run
I love to run. I know this in the same way I know that my eyes are brown, my second toe is taller than my big toe, and that the indentation above my right eye is a relic of the chicken pox I mercilessly scratched when I was three. Running is a part of me, of who I am and what I do. So much so, that sometimes I forget in much the same way I forget about the unique identifiers that make me who I am.
There have been plenty of mornings lately that I forget I love to run. Plenty of days when the alarm goes off and I turn it off, turn my back to the pre-dawn dark behind my blinds, pull the covers up around my shoulders and my dogs, and we snuggle in for one more hour of sleep. 
On these mornings, I get out of bed grumpier than normal, scolding myself for missing my run, and as the day progresses I get plenty of reminders of why running is necessary, at least for me.
It’s not that it’s bathing suit season, although sometimes I tell myself that this is why I should run. What will people think when they see me bulging out of my suit? But then I come back inside from walking my dogs and realize I’m wearing the same t-shirt I’ve slept in, shorts I’ve pulled out of the laundry hamper that too often clash with my rumpled shirt, and that I haven’t yet combed my hair. Apparently I’m not that concerned with what people think of me after all.
And it’s not that I worry too much about heart disease or diabetes or any of the other medical conditions that come from lack of exercise. I am blessed (and cursed) with a high metabolism, so sitting still for too long a stretch is nearly impossible for me, and I am constantly moving. Plus I’d rather be outside doing something than sitting inside doing anything.
Today is one of those days when I squandered my time by lying in bed instead of rolling out and running.
Here is what I miss when I don’t run:
- I want to be the person I am running when I’m not running. When I run I feel strong, capable, confident. I believe in myself, and believe I can do anything. This is not how I always feel when the running shoes come off. On days I run—and sometimes for a day or two after—these positive feelings carry over into my work, my personal relationships, and I am more productive, kinder, wiser. Better.
- Running is cleansing. It clears my mind of all the noise and clutter that won’t go away just because I sleep. It creates space for order and solutions. It unclogs negative emotions like anger or sorrow or frustration or whatever else is weighing on me, so my heart is lighter when I’m done. I face the day happy, positive, ready to talk with people and listen more intently.
- Running makes me a better writer. Each and every time I run, writing happens in my head, whether it’s working out a problem in an existing story or a new idea that’s born. My writing is better because I am out in the street, moving. Forging the relationship between mind and body and spirit that happens inevitably when I run.
- Running brings me closer to God because I see Him everywhere when I run. My mind is thus prepared to see Him throughout the rest of my day, in the people I meet and the circumstances I am presented with. Plus, we talk, God and I, and even if I come to find I am not listening, He is.
I need to remember all of these things so that tomorrow morning when my alarm sounds in the pre-dawn darkness I won’t roll over and ignore it, but will instead roll out and run.
Read Full Post | Make a Comment ( 1 so far )Finding My Pace with Emerson
A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds. So said Emerson. I know what he meant. I have been consistently cheating myself by running sprints on a treadmill, persistently thinking that the treadmill was pushing me to do and be my best. I ran as fast as the pace was set, and ran consistently, just a mite above my comfort zone.
But stepping onto a treadmill is like stepping into a river, a riptide. An average day of work. You get swept along by the current. The only decision you make is whether you will try to keep up, panic and flail, or step out.
All that you really learn about yourself is how long you can stand the ride.
So on Tuesday when Stephanie and I stepped onto the track to do our weekly speed work, I was nervous. 800s, five times, at just a touch faster than our mile pace. I established my mile last week, but didn’t know if I could sustain it—at a mite faster—for five half miles.
We warmed up, picked a lane, chatted about this and that, and then, in all earnestness, said go! I pushed my watch’s little red button, and I went. Fast. Thirty seconds too fast, a pace I could maybe sustain for one 800 but no way for five. So I slowed down. But too slow. Thirty seconds too slow, so that by the last 100 I had to pick back up into a sprint.
We went again. Same result. Too fast. And then too slow.
Each time we stopped to recover I was perplexed. How can it be that in all my years of running I don’t yet know how to find and maintain my own pace?
My focus has been on running long, where you can start slow, dawdle some, pick up the pace at the halfway point, give your muscles ample time to warm into what passes for a sprint in a distance run. That’s not the same as running short and fast, where you go and then you stay the course. All of your own accord. It requires an awareness, a mental and physical balance that I don’t usually step into until mile four.
Always do what you are afraid to do. That Emerson was a genius. I can’t wait until next Tuesday to do it again.
Read Full Post | Make a Comment ( 2 so far )Focus
A focused mind is one of the most powerful forces in the universe. So says the fortune tacked on the corkboard above my desk. I believe this is true, which is why the tiny slip of paper is pinned there, a reminder.
If only I could remember to focus on it from time to time.
So many projects, events, demands on my time and energy, so much noise in my head, that my mind often feels more like one of those crazy sprinkler toys you hook up to the hose than a laser. The head space required to work toward a goal is hard to find, more difficult to maintain.
For me this is true in running as much as it is in writing, work, the rest of life. The less progress I feel I make toward a goal, the worse I feel about myself. The more I settle for what feels like mediocracy. I start to believe I am something I’m not.
My running plan ended in April. For nine months a grid containing my current race’s plan was tacked to the side of my fridge. Every morning I knew what to do, how to start my day. Where I was headed. From November through April I ran three half marathons, one 10k, and a ten-mile trail run, the most racing in the least amount of time I’ve ever done.
When the last race ended, I was almost relieved. My body was tired, my store of self-discipline nearly expended. It was time to shift focus, away from long runs, toward building strength and speed. But how?
For several weeks the side of my fridge was a blank white slate. No plan, no specific goal, no race. No focus. I took a stab at weight training, trudging early to the gym. Splashed around in the neighborhood pool a few times. Ran, some.
But without a sense of direction or a specific goal I’ve found it difficult to follow a routine, to regain the self-discipline required to wake up early and push myself to my limit. My pace slowed tremendously, and I before I knew it I accepted this as normal. I’m just slow, I conceded. I can’t do any better than this.
This is all I have, all I am, all there is. 
Often when I sense self-defeat creeping in, I try to fix it on my own. Surely I can pull myself out, change direction, self-motivate, self-charge, self-something. But that’s not how it always works. Life is not self-contained.
On Tuesday morning two friends and I went out to the local high school track to do speed work. It wasn’t my idea. I hadn’t done speed work on a track since summer 2010. When I moved to San Antonio, a strange place where I didn’t yet know the lay of the land, I joined a gym and began speed work on a treadmill.
You know how it is. Once you get into the habit of doing something one way, you forget that there might be other—better—ways to do it. And sometimes you get bored, distracted, overwhelmed with other things and don’t do it at all.
Sometimes, it takes a friend to alter your environment such that you can change your sense of self.
I was nervous when my friend suggested speed work on the track, but at the same time excited. Relieved that here was someone who could show me a new way, someone who knew what she was doing. Someone to motivate me out of bed.
She set the day’s plan. A ladder, starting with a magic mile to see where we each are at the beginning of summer, then progressively shorter sprints with a progressively faster pace.
In theory, I said. Faster as we go shorter, in theory.
If I gave a mile my all, whatever that looked like, I didn’t think I could run faster as the distance decreased. I didn’t even know what “my all” meant. I was used to treadmills, where I thought I was running as fast as I could because there was no “cheating,” no slowing down. Plus it had been a while since I’d done sprints even there. And I was slower. Out of practice. You lose so much so fast when you lay off running for a while, I thought.
But when she said “go,” I went, Tigger’s theme song bouncing through my head as I sped along the springy, flat track, focused on nothing but my form, my breath, and the next five feet in front of me.
I ran my fastest mile. Ever.
I was stunned. This couldn’t be me. Couldn’t be my legs, my body, my breath pushing me along.
In amazement, I ran again, a 1,200, focusing on each stride, my pace a little faster than my mile.
I ran again, 800, faster and more focused, so that by the time we ran a 400 I felt like I was flying.
No matter that my legs turned to Jell-O from the kneecaps down and knotted braids from the kneecaps up. No matter that when I stopped my stomach clenched like a fist and nearly punched its way up through my throat. I was elated, stunned, spent.
I walked away from the track rethinking not only my running, but my writing, my work, every area of my life. I’m not what I thought I was. I’m more. And I wouldn’t have known if I hadn’t been shown a new environment, a new plan, a different approach on which to focus.
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More Than Running... 