As a decidedly mediocre runner, who has long done this more for my mental health, and never to win any kind of a race, I’ve always said that my time goal in any race is simply to finish (well to finish without vomiting.)
However, while I’ve gotten really good and not comparing myself to the person running next to me to not care exactly where in the finish results I come, but I still can’t seem to break myself is trying to beat myself.
My running journeys started more than a decade ago and I ran my first marathon about 13 years ago. Now, as I try to prepare to run my first postpartum marathon I still can’t seem to shake. The idea that I should be able to perform at least somewhat like I used to is just ... stickier than any Gu gel I've ever spilled on my hands.
About two weeks ago, when I got back from a month of Spain. I knew that I would have already lost some of my progress in preparing for the marathon. Well, I had some truly amazing runs and glorious, and Sebastian most of the time was spent in Madrid, which was less of vacation and more trying to help with whatever I could without her care plus Madrid in July means over 100° days usually in the 90s before 9 AM and my in-laws apartment isn’t exactly the most running friendly neighborhood. The only place you can run safely is quite literally up the hill for about a mile and a half and then back down and you’re surrounded by traffic the whole time. It’s not exactly conducive to maintaining the long runs. Still since I had completed two legs of the Pittsburgh marathon relay and then the Virginia wine country half marathon in the spring, I assumed I’d be able to bounce back pretty quickly into my training
But you know what they say about assumptions ... SIGH.
The day that we were supposed to return home I could feel a teeny tiny tickle on the back of my throat. I assumed it was just lack of sleep -- air conditioned Madrid apartments don’t exactly leave for the best sleeping conditions in July . I woke up pretty exhausted the Monday wegot back, but still attempted a short run, but by Tuesday, I felt achy with both a headache and severe bodyaches waking me Wednesday morning. I took a COVID test only to find out I was positive.
So much for getting right back into the swing of things
After taking a full week off, and three negative tests in a row, I decided let’s try to start slow. I’d already rearranged my marathon training for the Marine Corps marathon into a 12 week plan hoping that if I could follow this, it would still get me to the finish line, but I also knew that between the time abroad lag and recovering from Covid and simply just not moving as much I was gonna need a slow start. I turned to one of my all-time favorite go to for getting back in the action the run walk combinations on my peloton app so yesterday I laced up my shoes for a 45 minute walk plus run with John Hoskins. While it felt good when I first started running, I’ll be honest even five minutes in. I just felt ... sluggish. I felt fat. I felt slow. I felt OLD.
And I know I say that I don’t care about my per mile pace -- I had gotten out there. I had completed the run. Why couldn’t I just be happy?
Because of course, in the back of my mind, I could see that runner from the very first marathon the runner.
The runner who is regularly running something closer to 10 to 10:30 minutes per mile runner who would look at even crossing the 11 minute line as being a "bad pace"
So as much as I wanted to give myself a pat on the back for finishing that wrong all I could think of was "man you’ve gotten an old and slow"
Wanting to keep them momentum and keep up with the training plan I decided to do another 45 minute walk plus run to hopefully knock out another 3 miles later that week. This time I was doing one of my favorite trails from my house to Rose Park favorite little corner of Georgetown for me in the Tiny Overlord.
Again I tried my best to just enjoy the run. Enjoy the fact that it was only in the 70s, which is like a summer miracle here in the DC region and enjoy the fact that I was out and running my mile per minute pace. This time was a little bit faster, but it was still about 12 1/2 minutes.
Again, all I could see was that younger different runner the one who would have been horrified at such a time.
Yes, yes I know there’s nothing logical about this. I’m not just about to turn 30. I’m about to turn 43. I’ve had a kid. I’ve been doing a lot of travel. I’m under an extreme amount of stress. We’ve got elder care coming from both sides of the ocean fears about parents on both sides and their health I’ve taken on not one, but two, (and possibly there’s even gonna be a third!) side hustles to prepare for the potential mess that this cruel administration is making of federal employees. It’s not the same runner from before. And of course, I’ve also gained some weight in the last year’s. I’m about 15 pounds heavier than I was in the last time I ran a marathon, in addition to being a good seven years older. (periomenopause? the fall of democracy? Yes. Yes.)
But wow. It is HARD to keep that in mind when I look at my watch.
Funniliy enough, I can be so good at giving out advice to my own students about not comparing themselves to peers, about honoring their unique writing process. You know what they say about teachers" we are the worst students. And that might just be ture; I might’ve been able to train myself not to compare myself to the other runners around me to not look at the different bodies in the different people and say that I should be like that, but I still can’t somehow accept that I’m not the same runner I once was.
This, alas, is not a post that has answers. Honestly, atfer struggling mightily this week in 100 degree heat index super-humidity and having to walk large parts of a 11 mile long run on Tuesday and a 7 mile "medium" one today, I came home as a sweaty stinky exhausted heap, considering just dropping out of the marathon as I looked at that training schedule, seeing the 15 and 18 and even 20 mile runs coming up soon. (And considering my more than 12 minute/mile time and the painful dragging my booty up Wilson Boulevard's hill) I began to feel like I was fooling myself: who am I to think with everything going on, and with how slow I know was, that I could possibly do these long training runs let alone do a marathon?
This is not a "bad" time for a 7 mile run on a 94 degree, super humid day.
But because it's a slower time than circa 2015 me, why can't I see that?
But I came home to my almost kindergartener, dressed in her Wonder Woman costume - the very same superhero like to run dresse as. "Wow,mommy, you were gone for lots -- you must run LONG!"
For her, the long time was not bad; it was just a sign that I did just that - I went long.
It's hard not to smile at that.
So, I’m ultimately not going to drop out. I might not have perfected the ability to not compare 43 year-old perimenopausal overly stressed Mom -me with a very different 29-year-old version of myself, who first went out for her marathon training runs who had whole Sundays free .(And who had parents still healthy, and who lived in a functional democracy ... and who didn’t have a Tiny Overlord in need of her attention)
And there is at least one piece of advice that I always give my student writers that I have learned how to follow, which is that the worst thing is to stop.
So I will continue to struggle with my self-comparisons. Honestly, I probably will still beat myself up a bit over the times that seems "slow." But, I’m not going to stop yet. I know this much: I’ve done the Marine Corps marathon six times before, so I know I’ll cross the finish line. I know I can do that -- even if it is with a LOT more walking than before. And much like I tell my students that as long as you turn in something some piece of writing you’re making progress forward, I’m gonna keep trying to tell myself that as long as I am taking those steps, "forward" is still a good pace.
