How to save your own life

Published in Elephant Journal

“The trick is not how much pain you feel–but how much joy you feel. Any idiot can feel pain. Life is full of excuses to feel pain, excuses not to live, excuses, excuses, excuses.

- Erica Jong

A friend once told me:

half the people in our running group were going through divorce, confronting change and loss. Another third were working through broken bodies and sickness, Confronting mortality.

The rest were just regular crazy. I think I'm a bit of each.

In running, I become a student of me and my limits. In running, I become a student of the universe and its limitlessness. In running, I learn the distinction between the two is everything and nothing.

Running doesn't give joy. It allows the space to give joy to yourself.

Running won't save you. It allows the space to save yourself.

So, to save your own life: Go for a long run.

Run beyond the thunderstorm. Run beyond your tears. Outlast your phone battery. Outlast fear of being alone in the woods.

Run along the river, run in the woods. Run with crickets and egrets and dark green. Run until you are so tired you can at last be still, and listen to what the river has to tell you about living a life.

Rush and bubble and gush, joy in full force, become a tributary and flow into the river. Flow around the obstacles. Let the wind move you, the sun warm you, make you glitter and shine.

Converge with other tributaries, flow and surge. When spread too thin in the shallows, slow down.

Pool and puddle and pause, become a source for deep-rooted trees and lush stories, and for people and places that don't know they need you. Then reflect back that beauty for others to enjoy.

Run along, and when you are tired from running then flow. Unseen forces are moving you, even when you seem to be still.

Bear witness to joy, to stillness, bear witness to yourself. Go for a long run, and save your own life.

The next marathon

Marathons are like potato chips, someone said: you can't just do one. It's been true for me; since completing my first marathon last September my mind has been full of planning for my next, and my next after that. To that end, I've managed to successfully maintain a running base through the winter and am heading to Nashville this weekend for a half marathon, which is a stepping stone to my next full marathon (hopefully in June). But that's not the only marathon in my life.

The next big, scary marathon is building my writing practice. Writing is hard, exquisite, terrifying, thrilling for me. I love writing, it's an expansive space I can share and a straitjacket demanding precision and clarity. Most of all, it's a practice that requires building just as a marathon is building miles and having good runs and bad. So, just like I did when I began my marathon journey last year, I've decided to join a group to help develop that practice for myself, Jeff Goins' 500 Words 31 day practice challenge. This blog will be a place where I share my best ideas and writing, a chronicle of my next marathon and a challenge to myself to start where I am in my work and fall down and get up and work again. If you are working to build a practice as a writer, I invite you to check out Jeff's page and consider taking up the challenge yourself. If you do, let me know; I'd love to hear from you.

Did it! Or, the importance of getting lost

I am a marathoner. It feels so good to be able to say that. They say it will change you (it does), it is an emotionally charged event (it was) and that there's never a good time to do one anyway so you might as well start right now, where you are. So I did. And here we are. Thank you for sharing it with me!

The day was almost perfect in terms of weather; only the last few miles running into a strong wind gave a significant challenge. I fueled well (thank you, Fox Valley Marathon for your excellent course support), and several times was able to just stretch out and lose myself in the midst of some of the midwest's most beautiful scenery. I saw blue heron, snowy egrets, kayaks and canoes, and ran through some stunning wooded areas along the Fox River. This is one of the things people like best about the Fox Valley Marathon (plus, it's relatively flat). It was a "top ten" good day, and my finish time was under 5:30, which was my goal.

Out there, I "lost myself" in that positive sense we think of forgetting your troubles, being present where you are, just enjoying things as they come.

This week, I have felt like I am "losing myself" again, only this time it's in the other sense. The post-marathon week has been, for a variety of reasons, emotionally draining, exhausting, just plain hard. My sense of feeling unmoored this week is in stark contrast to the joy and exhilaration of losing myself in the woods on marathon Sunday. One felt like being a leaf floating on a river; the other like a pebble tossed by the waves.

In both cases I am at a loss for words to describe that "losing myself" feeling. But maybe that's the point. The universe is calling me to lose myself, in both senses of the word, for a while. It's unfamiliar territory.

So, go back to the main lessons I learned from this journey: when you're facing something like that, find some friends or a support network, start where you are, and persist. So that's what I'll do.

Onward.

Start

Whoosh! Here we are. The shirt is ready, we've raised $450 (thank you amazing people!), and the training is done. It's time to run. I was greeted this morning by the biggest sky full of stars I can remember seeing in a long time around here. The air is clear, and the weather looks just about perfect. I feel blessed to be part of this day.

If you do it right, the process of training for anything is supposed to get you to the starting line ready to go. That's it. You have no control over what will happen during the event itself, so you have to let go of worry as much as you can.

I'll write more after my race about all the many things I've learned on my journey here, but for now let me leave you with this fact: friendship, being there for someone who needs it and just loving them and offering a hand, has made all the difference in so many lives. It's why I'm here today, toeing the starting line. So, to all my friends and folks who offered a pb&j, a kind word, or a laugh along the trail,

THANK YOU! Thank you for being here, now.

Love you.

Now i remember all to well Just how it feels to be all alone You feel like you'd give anything For just a little place you can call your own Thats when you need someone, someone that you can call And when all your faith is gone Feels like you cant go on Let it be me If its a friend you need Let it be me

Ray LaMontagne

Have a blessed, fantastic race day, folks. Thanks for taking this journey with me, and with those who need it even more. Don't forget how important you are, to your community, your friends, to every day, and to me.

Let's go!

This is your path

This is your path. A coupla Sundays ago I joined the Fox Valley Marathon group on an 18 mile training run. It was an out-and-back run along the river trail, with a turn-around point in Aurora. Unfortunately, the turn-around point wasn’t marked, so several of us didn’t quite know when to turn around and head back. Through my own mis-calculation, I ended up going 1.5 miles(!) past the turn-around (oopsies), which added three miles to an already long training run. Ack.

Along the way I saw:

• A lot of really fit runners of all ages, shapes and sizes enjoying themselves and making an 18 mile run look like a stroll through the park.
• My friend hobbling to a park bench with a broken foot after he stepped on a walnut at mile 8.
• Several runners pass me with looks of dogged determination and laser-like focus.

Can you tell I was comparing myself? As much as we try not to do it, it’s easy to do, particularly in situations that are new, or when we lack confidence.

The lesson: it helps to remind myself of two things. First, that we are all one walnut shell away from being out for the season. Stuff happens. And second, preparing and focusing on my own situation (starting where I am) will serve me better than trying to figure out how the others make it look so easy.

“Run YOUR race. Focus on YOUR work. Don’t be tempted out of envy to attempt to morph into something you’re not.” – Todd Henry

This is your path, and that is his. Run your path.

A certain darkness

If I've learned anything in nearly 12 years of dragging heavy things around cold places it's that true, real inspiration and growth only comes from adversity and from challenge, from stepping away from what's comfortable and familiar and stepping out into the unknown. - Ben Saunders, Arctic explorer

Failing, and failing, and failing. And getting up.

When things are terrible, messy, painful, it's not much comfort to know that growth comes from adversity.

Even knowing this truth intellectually, even when you really know it's true, it still stinks. Last Saturday I ran 16 miles, and it was not a good run. It was hard. I was very tired, hadn't been sleeping well and had been under a lot of stress the prior week. Couldn't prepare as well as I usually do for a long run. I knew it was going to be tough.

I also knew that marathon training is about "learning how to run when you're tired", a marathon coach once said. How many other things in life can be about that? Probably quite a few.

"Our failures make us vulnerable to transformation in a way the good we do cannot," says Sr. Maryann Mueller, Justice and Peace Coordinator for the Felician Sisters of North America.

So the purpose of long, long training runs, the ones I'm doing on these last weekends before the race, is to build capacity. But it's also to fail. To get to the difficult place. To be tired, and keep going. Walk for a while, stop if you need to. Then start again. Run some more.

But there are stars there, in that darkness. Sometimes when things are difficult, you see them better.

Someone gave me part of their pb&j sandwich. Someone else gave me some of their water. Several someones high-fived me near the end and encouraged me. I didn't know any of these people, they were just other runners, stopping and starting over and over again themselves. I appreciated those simple kindnesses so much. They reminded people can be pretty awesome.

That's why the corollary to "a certain darkness is needed to see the stars" is compassion. When things are difficult for you, if you can gather the strength to give someone some of your water, or can appreciate and receive that gift, it becomes easier to start again. We find hope in each other's small acts.

The importance of test runs. Plus, the shirt.

10 mile marathon course "test run" yesterday. Which went really well! Except for one thing, which reminded me why test runs are important.

Ah, the new shoes. Love them! Purple, sparkly, and unfortunately left a blood blister on my right foot. Which is why new shoes should be broken in gradually (I knew that), and why test runs are important.

This applies to everything we do, whether you're doing a job interview, managing a big project, swatching with your knitting before doing that big project, or running a long race. Give yourself some test runs! Here are some other reasons:

• They build confidence. Every performer knows that the only way to get a handle on nervousness (or sheer terror) associated with doing something new, important, or in front of a whole lotta people is to do it. This applies to everything we do: the more you practice (especially if you can do it in a lower-stakes setting, like a practice run), the more confident you will feel on the big day.
• They orient you. Getting a lay of the land before-hand, how the course will run, gives you one less distraction.
• Gives you time to fail. And fail. And begin again. Shorter runs, practice sessions, smaller-stakes projects are lower-cost opportunities to fail, be stupid (whether from poor planning or, um, new shoes). “If you can remove all fears and go one step at a time, you will find things that will guide you along the way,” said Tobias van Schneider, product designer for Spotify. “You will learn new things, absorb new information, meet people, get feedback, see demand in different areas — new doors will open up for you.”

Test runs are a gift you give yourself.

Run with me!

Also, officially unveiling the race shirt! You know, the one I'll put your name (or your company's logo) on if you donate to Lazarus House on my fundraising page:

I'll be adding the name of my blog and the LH logo to my shirt shortly, but there's plenty of room for your name! What are you waiting for?

Shout-out  to my first two donors, Blaine Richards and Kristi Loar! Thank you for your generous support of Lazarus House, and for running with me in September!