Running in Reflection
When you spend some time away from running, it seems like the only thing that matters when you come back is building fitness. Everything shows you how fit you aren’t, how hard the work is, and the effort it takes to complete what once was a simple task.
I can’t remember the last time I felt like I would vomit during a training run. That overwhelming hard to locate pain that is somewhere in your stomach and your chest, and somewhere on the edge of nausea, and a cramp and can’t breathe all at the same time. When I think about it outside of running, the inherent looming pain instils a little bit of fear in me. And when I’m in it, I feel like I’m walking along the edge of a cliff, just trying to get from one side to the other.
I’ve spent this week adding a fast effort to the end of every run. Maybe 3 kilometres maybe one, maybe the last 1200 meters. But I need to remind my body what it feels like to run fast again. I need it to remember what it feels like to have my legs turn over fast, my hip extension be full, and my arms pump for propulsion. More than that, I need to remind it that at the end when you feel like crap and don’t think you can go any faster or push anymore, you can. There is a bit left to grind.
At the beginning of every run – within the first two kilometres – there has been the same story play out in my head:
Voice 1: “I don’t think I can run fast at the end today. I’m not feeling well/have tired legs/didn’t sleep well/(insert excuse here).”
Voice 2: “That’s okay. You don’t have to do it today. You don’t have to do it every day! take a break today”
The run carries on. Some days easily, and I fall into a stride and a fluid movement, surrounded by sun just glimpsing through the clouds and the air still fresh and crisp. Other days it’s hard. I feel like I’m flying and killing it and look down to see more than five minutes per kilometre. Or I feel like I’m slogging through thick mud, slowly plodding along, every step a challenge and victory simultaneously as I step forward. Running is never linear. It never progresses along as a step by step process, getting better and better. Instead it’s like putting together a puzzle where you don’t get to do all the easy pieces first.
As I reach the end, the last three kilometres looming, the story starts again. This idea that now I’ve done the run and put in the work, so I definitely don’t have to go fast at the end – at least you got out there and went running!
But that’s not good enough for me. Getting out there and going running is hardly ever what’s in question. Yes sometimes it’s hard to just get out the door. I stand by the fact that every goddamn day, running is simultaneously the hardest, easiest, best and worst part of my day. But the hardest part of it all is to do work in the run, not get out the door for the run.
And so I pick up the pieces. I feel this unravelling string of conceding to defeat and settling for “that’s good enough,” slowly start to form back into shape. I remind myself that it is possible to pick up the pace and run faster in that moment. I remind myself that it is possible to feel bad and run well at the same time. “Get over this idea that it will just magically happen and you will be bounding down the road effortlessly like a gazelle,” I tell myself. “Every time you have run well it has always been a certain degree of hard and concentrated effort.” Why would this be any different?
And then I’m in it. I’m in that faster turnover and heaver breathing. I’m in that place of arms pumping harder and shortened ground contact. Someone walks out into the street in front of me and I’m going fast enough that it simultaneously makes me a little angry they did it and made me slow down for a few seconds, and also scared that I nearly ran into them and ploughed them over. I would have just gotten up and kept going.
Because when you get into this state of movement and motion, it feels like the thing you are meant to do. I love the feeling of running fast. I love that hovering place of being on the verge of feeling like I am going too fast and can’t sustain the pace, and asking myself, “can I hurt more? Can I give more? Is this all that I have right now?”
I’ve learned that often it’s not. Deeper below the layers of head trash and excuses, tired legs and mental barriers, is another gear. When you’re not in that gear it feels like you couldn’t possibly get to there. But once you make it, you wonder why you weren’t there all along: it just feels better. It feels natural. It feels like potential and effort.
Often when I think about running fast, I go back to moments of past marathons, like the 2019 Chicago Marathon. I ran a lot of that race by myself. Sure there were people around me, passing me or that I was passing, but in a lot of streets, turns and kilometre markers, I was on my own. I can remember distinct places on the course, pushing through by myself, and knowing that it was all me. You’re in this, I told myself, “you’re doing this.” Just keep going. Get tough.
Most of the time there is this massive mental hurdle in front of every running breakthrough goal or ambitious want. The physical work and the mental resolve fall off of the same page and stop working together and instead, one tries to sabotage the other. Running is this constant state of trying to rectify these two pieces and make them arrive at their best in the same place at the same time. It’s why the success of a run is so elusive and always a constant chase. It’s why some days you finish a run and say “I quit,” and other days you run a marathon on your own and your face hurts from smiling more than your legs do.
There is no celling or finish in running. There is no winning of something or accomplishment of something that makes you think you are done and don’t have to work anymore. Because bad days, slow paces, doubtful moments aside, every time you reach the edge of your potential, something comes crawling back inside and reminds you that you have more. Get tough. Get going. Running doesn’t let you give up on yourself.