From Here to There
Nine months from today I’ll be in the midst of the Charleston 100, a self-supported, non-sanctioned event (just the kind I love). I spent some time today visualizing that race, that place I’ll find myself in – and it feels a lot like trying to imagine myself on Mars, or at least a very foreign country.
There was a time in my life where it wouldn’t, where it would feel familiar, where visualization wouldn’t be a priority until a few days prior. It’s not like 100 miles have ever been easy, and I’ve DNF’ed more than I’ve finished, but 100 miles has, for years, seemed manageable. I’ve done it before, hell it isn’t even my longest consecutive run.
But here’s the thing, I got winded walking up the quarter mile hill from the grocery store today. According to Strava I didn’t even run 60 miles last year. Total. 60 miles total.
Now, I did have a baby, focused on yoga and strength, started a new job, and really threw myself into coaching. Sure, I started running without a watch too, to alleviate some of that pressure. But still.
60 miles!?!
And nearly half of that was shuffling through the Chicago Marathon. What’s even more disheartening, I did not cross a single state. 52 weekends, give or take, and none of them involved me along some backcountry road, desperately searching for Diana and craving a potato chip sandwich.
Have I become a has-been? Did I peak? Was 2017 it? Aside from a few death rattles over the past few years, slogging across a few more states, a long hike cut short by a loss, were my long-distance days over? Worse. Were they right? Did having kids mean giving up the freedom of an open road and a pair of tennis shoes?
These questions flitted through my mind, interrupting my sacred race visualization. Ultimately all the doubts congealed into one, repeated like a bastard mantra - how in the fuck are you going to do this? How are you going to get from “here” to “there?”
The answer was so simple, right there. If it was a snake it would have bit me (as we say back home).
I’ll run.
Running, ultimately is about getting from one place to another, either literally or metaphorically. That’s ultimately what my 2017 transcon was about – the singular goal of carrying my body from one side of the country to the other on my own two feet. More than that, I wanted to move my mind and my soul from one side of the journey to the other. People ask that question all the time – “why?” I asked myself the same question every day, and I always came to the same answer – I wanted to be the woman on the other side. I wanted to get from there to here.
And now I’m here, and it was worth every painful step – but there’s always another “there” to reach, another place to see, to get to, and that place, for me right now, is the Charleston 100 miler.
I’ve been here before, starting over. Of course, my path this time involves 15 or so more weeks of pregnancy, labor, delivery, and that sacred post-partum period of having a newborn, a toddler, and a preteen. But I know that progress isn’t always linear. But the principle is the same – simply run, and when I can’t run, walk. When I can’t walk, crawl, just keep moving towards “there.” Because ultimately, no matter where you might be, you can never stay there. I can’t stay “here.” The time keeps passing, the calendar keeps turning – and I have to go somewhere. It might as well be “there.”