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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