The Happy Runner

Recently, David and Megan Roche came to speak at Colorado Running Company here in Colorado Springs.  I've never been to a book talk before, and I wasn't sure I needed another running book to sit in my book basket and glare at me resentfully because I couldn't bring myself to read it in my current burned out state. However, the event description about not running for results and finding your running why kept popping up in my brain in the hours before the event. Slapping a hat on my wet hair and throwing on a flannel, I decided to make the drive up to hear what they had to say.

St. Louis Marathon 2010

At first, their packaged line about not running for results met with a lot of mental eye rolling.  Sure, you can say that, because you all are elite runners, I snarkily whispered to them. How can you say you don't care about results when winning literally pays your bills?

But after working through the book, I began to reflect on my own running why, and the races I actually enjoyed.  Not a single race I had a specific goal for stands out in my brain.  Going way back to when I still ran roads, the only road  marathon I actually enjoyed was the St. Louis marathon--after 6 months of twice a week physical therapy it was my first race back post broken foot/IT band trauma.  It is still to date the best marathon I have ever run.  I was just so happy to be back out on a race course, I ran exactly like the Roche's advise in their book--like a kid at recess.  I was shocked when I looked at the time and realized I'd run the race so fast.

Everyone gets finish tape in Japan, so you feel really awesome. :P

My first baby ultra, a 60K on the Noto Hanto peninsula of Japan, was the same way.  I signed up for the race because I was pissed off I'd been kicked out of the race I really wanted to run, the Madarao 50K.  I figured I was already trained up, and who didn't want a nice vacation on the beach?  The course ran all along the peninsula shore, with cool breezes and the sound of the ocean.  I was the only foreigner running the race, so people kept talking, cheering and encouraging me the entire way.  Aside from my 50K flip out at my ex-husband because he wanted to know why, as I was jogging up a large hill that was not on the elevation profile, I was not happier to see him--I smiled more during this race than any I've ever run.  Again, it's also my PR for races longer than a marathon. 

So of course I then circled back to the catalyst of my running crisis--my DNF at this past year's Run Rabbit Run 100. I've been going round and round in circles trying to figure out what went wrong and how to move forward.  Now, I realize I never should have started the race.

RRR 50 September 2016

My first 50 mile race was Run Rabbit Run in 2016.  I wasn't properly trained for it, and when I finished anyway, with three minutes to spare before the cut off time, I was so stoked about the potential of what the human body could do I immediately decided I wanted to do the 100.  I had a stable job, marriage, house and peer group.  It seemed like an ideal time to commit myself to the amount of mental and physical training such a race required.  I set my sights on 2018 and put training plans in motion.

When the race registration opened in late 2017, I was living in the guest bedroom of our house, looking for my own apartment and researching how to file divorce papers. I had had to change jobs after my school was threatened with closure to a school 25 minutes away in a position I vehemently disliked.  Nothing in my life was stable and I was going to lose everything I'd worked for up to that point. 

I felt like a failure, and there was no way I was going to give up on one more thing.  I defiantly signed up for the 100 anyway, determined to prove I could do it all--get divorced, work multiple jobs to pay off my divorce debt, move to a new community, and train for one of the biggest distances in ultra running.  I began recruiting pacers, making a plan to get a job I didn't hate, and then sidetracked everything by getting involved in a bad relationship with an acquaintance.

Discovering I took second place in my age group at the
Summer Round Up when the dialog in my head the entire race
was "this course sucks, my time is slow and I suck".

After digging myself out of the rebound rabbit hole, I ran to chase down my demons.  I joined every running group in town, pushing myself to go faster and harder, and posted race times faster than I had even in my twenties.  I lost fifteen pounds, and struggled with sleeping and anxiety.  Once I started placing at races, I started to care.  I looked at the race results posted before I left the race, and beautiful runs turned into bitter disappointments when the numbers didn't look how I wanted them to. Running became a weapon--I might suck at relationships, money management, my job and life--but I can take you out at a race even if it kills me.

Going in to the summer, I tackled mountains with surgical precision.  I refused to let anyone join me on  my mountain adventures because they would slow me down.  I clocked more miles and vert than I ever thought I could, and checked them off like everything else on my very full to-do list.  I never stopped to look at the views, I resented hikers and slower runners in my way, and I complained about "having" to go to the mountains for another couple days.  Looking back at the numerous mountains I summitted this past year, I don't remember a single one I enjoyed.  My focus even during these runs was still negative--I'm not fast enough, it's not far enough, this scree field is bull^&*(, @#$@ these @#%@^ boulders that are going to have me injured.

The pacing "manual".

Going in to the fall, dragging the stress from a new administrative school year position I had been working since July in addition to my full time summer job, I prepared for the race like a final exam, complete with organized study guides for my crew.  The day before the race, I don't think I cracked a smile, being all business with last minute logistics and confirmations.  Race morning, my crew danced around happy and snapping pics, while I rolled my eyes and judged the outfits of the other runners around me. 

The Roches' say it's the process of running that is important, not the finish line.  When I toed the line at Run Rabbit, I had done enough ultras to know that you need a mantra to get you through the dark moments (which in this race, would end up involving 20 miles of puking and dry heaving).  My mantra was still anger--I was running this race to prove to everyone that I was still badass, despite everything that had happened, and to "get back" at everyone that had hurt me over the last year.  I was still trying to run down my demons--but this time it was a much longer run.

I once had a student that was so angry, he would hurt himself, me, and his friends.  He would destroy the classroom, breaking anything that got near him, and this went on for months.  One day, he sat in my lap and I let him beat me up.  After about 20 minutes, he abruptly changed from enraged hysteria to deep, guttural sobs. I have never seen a human in so much pain.  All the anger had finally given way to what he was really feeling.

Anger almost always masks pain.  Pain is weak.  It is ok to show anger, but it is weak to show pain.  When I texted my crew to come get me at the aid station, after having been cut off for hours but unable to find a way off the course, I was confused and numb.  I didn't know what had gone wrong, and I felt like this was just another failure in a long line of recent failures.  Life sucks. Shrug.

Looking back now, if I would have crossed the finish at Run Rabbit, it wouldn't have eradicated my demons.  In fact, it may have created more.  I used running as a way to punish myself for my failure and mistakes.  I hid my insecurities and fear behind training plans and age group places.  I told myself: "You must run fast and hard because you must prove you are a runner.  You must run a 100 miler because you must prove you are strong.  You are nothing until you prove yourself worthy."  I am grateful to Run Rabbit, because I finally ran out all of my anger, and opened the door to pain--just like my student.

The Roches' also use the mantra "I am enough".  I never knew how hard this is to say to oneself until I tried it on for size.  Not only do I need to find joy in the process of running, but I need to find joy in myself. 

So I've been staying home, reading, doing yoga and breathing, and trying to rediscover who I am now.  What is my running "why"?  What are my goals?  I don't know.  But, it's a process.

Trying to be secure in myself while also a part of the larger whole
is my goal for 2019.  Also, how come I had to be speak no evil? :P