These Gentle Rolling Hills Lead Me Home
You probably know I've been frustrated on many levels from being sidelined from running for over a year, thanks, primarily, to a right foot arch/tendon gone bad. (That, plus my baseline joint woes, which always simmer in the background). Despite loving daily lap swimming more than anything, I've really missed running and power walking as a regular part of my fitness routine.
A lot of uncertainty awaits me in the coming year or so, as I look to finish my degree and figure out what comes next. One part of that uncertainty is not knowing where I'll be living once I finish school. Charlottesville has been a special, special place for me, so it was a long-standing goal to do my favorite local race at least once more before I (possibly or probably) have to move.
Also, a lot of people close to me were skeptical that I'd be able to participate in a race anytime soon, given my injuries. Certainly, there's a part of me that wanted to prove them all wrong. More importantly it awakened a need for me to prove to myself that I could make a comeback, even if it meant running really slowly or walking the whole thing.
Also, as bad as it sounds, I've admittedly greeted this school year with some ambivalence. I think (the ambivalence) really stems from the uncertainty and insecurity that being in the last leg of school casts upon me, and it's probably normal. I'm not quite ready to leave this area. It's home for me. I have a lot of hard, serious thinking to do and weighty career/professional and personal decisions to make. These scare me. My advisor assured me that this is normal and expected, and that she would be a little bit worried if I didn't have some degree of it. The truth is that this ambivalence and insecurity has paralyzed me a little bit from buckling down and finishing my comps. So I ultimately decided to 1) do the 4-miler to prove to myself more than to anyone else that I could go the distance; and 2) go a slower pace and even walk most of it, as per doctor's orders.
If you've ever done a road race of any kind, whether it's a 5K, a half or full marathon, or anything in-between, you know that a lot of getting to the finish line is mental. And I think that ironically, that's doubly so when you choose to walk it or run slowly. And that's because when you're NOT zipping through it at your top speed, the road ahead seems longer, more enormous. The sun gets hotter on you by the minute. You have more time to think about how much you're sweating, how thirsty you are, or how much your legs are starting to hurt or how many people are ahead of/behind you. And if you're competitive like me, you occasionally are consumed by thoughts of returning to your old self and trying to run it, and then an ensuing internal dialogue where you tell yourself not to be stupid and run it in the face of injury and against doctors orders, or you really might not see the finish line and you'll just ruin it all. Slow and steady wins the race (when you're competing against yourself and your inner demons and when you're trying for personal triumphs that are separate from ribbons or medals or speed).
In the end, I walked large parts of it, ran some, and set a goal of walking it in under an hour. A 15 minute walking mile for someone who is 5'2 and doesn't have long limbs seemed respectable. I had to tell myself often to keep putting one foot in front of another, and to never stop or look back. Of course, I broke out into a full sprint when the finish line popped into sight. As my timing-chip-tagged foot crossed over the finish line, I looked up at the clock to see my official time of 59:09. Yes, I had achieved my goal. I had completed the race--AND done it in under and hour like I set out to do.
As hokey as it sounds, my eyes welled up and tears of joy started inadvertently rolling down my face immediately after crossing the finish line. It was so overwhelming and exhilerating all at once. Right then and there, I knew the power of metaphors...that finishing 4 miles meant that somehow I WILL get my comps and dissertation done. I'll do it step-by-step, and won't give up even when it all seems endless, impossible, and huge, and I'm swimming in turbulent seas of uncertainty. As I took off my sunglasses, the cloudless blue sky and sun shone so brilliantly across the grassy field where I stood that it hurt in a good way, just like my legs. The familiar gentle rolling blue ridge mountains that I've known since childhood told me that, even if my time left in Virginia is finite and even I have to move far away for a job, it would always be home. I took my cell phone out of the pocket of my running shorts:
Mom?....Mom?....{composing self and wiping tears away}....I did it!
