Back in the Saddle

I’m back in the saddle again.

A short warm up run

To start the work week.

I huff and I plod along,

Enjoying the green buds and the birds’ chirp,

The start of spring.

I think about how I felt in NYC,

A lean, mean marathon machine.

That was a long time ago.

I may be out of shape, 

But my mind is stronger than my body.

Stronger than when I started this quest.

I’ve grown.

My Thank You Letter to my Body

 After reading Lose Weight with Ang’s beautiful thank you note to her body, I felt compelled to write one of my own.  It has been a rough year, and my body has taken a back seat to my mind, a theme that needs to change as my 50^th birthday looms in the near future.  I hope you appreciate, and I hope you are inspired to write a thank you note to your body!

Enjoy!

PR Performance! October, 2018

Dear body,

Thank you for being so strong and healthy. 

It didn’t start that way.  The danger of the umbilical cord wrapped around my neck made my birth scary for a first-time mother and landed me in the high-risk nursery for the first week of my life.  That week was the last time I spent the night in the hospital, thanks to your strength and health.

I would need that strength and health of body, because my mind was often too broken to properly take care of you.  A mind that refused to eat at an age when food was needed to grow.  A mind driven to submit to hour after hour of training in order to excel in running and figure skating, despite having no natural talent or gifts.  A mind that insists on endless showers and hand washings.  A mind needing to be beaten into submission as the outside world triggered it into chaos.

You have been my rock, my pillar.  No matter what damage I inflicted upon you, you kept getting up, kept living, kept surviving.

It’s hard to believe that it’s been a year and a half since you put on a show, negative splitting the last five miles of the New York Marathon and finishing under five hours.  I was a lean, mean, running machine, and the future loomed bright.  There were so many things I could do for you to make you even stronger, even faster, even more beautiful.

But my mind was still healing from another breakdown, one that ended my job and my relationship that year.  Marathon training had to be put on hold as I struggled to stay ahead of the bills.

Again, you rose to the occasion, allowing me to take on several physically intensive jobs that required being in top shape.  As a global pandemic of an unknown virus shut down the world, your immune system kept me from succumbing to disease, allowing me to shuffle and adapt as furloughs loomed.

It was a glance in the mirror on a warm July afternoon that I noticed the damage I had inflicted upon you.  My face, always a source of pride, looked crooked.  My angled jaw was now rounded and chubby.  I looked at my body, the lithe sinew that traveled across the five boroughs of New York City, atrophied into a fluffy marshmallow.

My mind broke again, fearing everything from a possible stroke to a horrible disease.  It was in this fear that I realized how much I had taken your strength and health for granted, how many times I had skipped the basic checkups and maintenance, the things I had done to hurt you instead of care for you.  Inside of a world that could not return to normal and hours of isolation, my mind went into a tailspin, sliding down a spiral of self-pity and self-abuse instead of giving you the love and caring you deserved.

By the time I finally made it to the dentist and the doctor, I learned that once again, you had risen to the occasion.  No cavities, no major health issues, and no serious illnesses.  You gave me the gift of being able to heal my mental illnesses without having to battle physical ones as well.  I cannot thank you enough for that.

It is why I end this letter with a promise.  I promise to care for you, to treat you with love, to do everything in my power to nourish the strength and health you have given me all these years so that we can have many, many more years to come.

With Love,

Erin

 

Monster

 Something doesn’t feel right.

One little thing,

Shoved dramatically out of place,

One micron.

 

I can’t get it out of my mind,

The imperfection, the missing piece.

The stress builds in me,

As I cannot seem to correct the flaw.

 

My mind starts accelerating,

Faster than a Porsche.

Anxiety to panic,

Anger to rage.

 

I’ve become a demon,

A troll,

A fire breathing dragon,

A combination of all three.

 

The rage blinds my mind.

Maim! Hurt! Kill! Destroy!

The circuits have overloaded,

The fuses, blown.

 

Punishment is metered out,

To excise my internal pain.

For what I did wrong,

To cause the entire mess.

 

Then as fast as a Thanos snap,

The monster vanishes.

My mind is eerily quiet,

And full of dust.

The Grind

I’ve been a chemistry tutor for over five years.  What started as helping out a friend has become a new career, and I’ve added math, including calculus, to the mix this year.  Gosh, I so missed solving hard math problems.

Many people think they’re bad at math because they don’t have all the answers instantaneously.  They don’t even know what skill they need to start a problem.  Chemistry is challenging because it’s usually the first time you’re using math to solve science—an entire year of those dreaded word problems.

One of the many secrets to mastering math and chemistry isn’t a formula or a cheat sheet or having mad skills.  It’s being able to attack each problem, each test question.  Look at what you’re given, look at what they want from you, and go from A to B.

How do you do that?  Practice.  The practice of doing many, many problems until you are able to attack anything that might be thrown at you.

It’s no different than anything else you practice—an instrument, a sport, an art.  In order to master any subject, you have to do the grind.  The grind of waking up and doing the same thing day after day.  The grind of focusing on perfecting each little detail.  The grind of continuing to move forward so slowly that you see more failure than success.  The grind of brushing yourself off after each failure and getting back on the path.

Over the years, people are in awe of my chemistry degree, like I have this amazing talent.  To be honest, it’s just that my love of the subject gave me the determination to grind out problem after problem.  I can’t sleep on an unsolved chemistry or math or computer programming problem, often waking at 2 am to finish what I started.  It just tumbles in my brain, crying to be solved, just like the baseball player down the street throwing curveballs at a net late on a summer evening or the oboe player next door playing the same measure of music over and over again on a Saturday morning.

Of course, it’s easy for someone with a passion for baseball or a talent for playing the oboe to do the grind, but have you ever heard someone express a huge passion for being a cog in a Corporate America cube farm?  How do you grind at something you don’t love?  That doesn’t come easily for you?

How many of you loved school when you were in second grade, but hated it by the time you were in high school because the classwork was just so hard?  How many of you grew up playing Little League or taking dance lessons or studying piano, but quit when it seemed that you had hit your limit? 

I joke that I’m the utility ballplayer of life because I’ve done so many things, but quit before I had mastered them.  I’m competent in a lot of skills, but not exceptional.  My resume goes from research chemist to quality consultant to executive director of a political party to tutor.  I’ve taken dance lessons and piano lessons and figure skating lessons.  I played clarinet in the school band, nine years total.  Even where I do have talents, math and science, didn’t help me push through the challenges in college.  I graduated with my degree, but barely.

It’s hard to believe that a year ago, I was on top of the world with my running, having negatively split New York through the hardest part of the course to break 5 hours and get my second fastest time.  2020 was supposed to be the year I took a break from racing to focus on how I could get that Boston qualifying time.  Then the world shut down, and my focus turned to survival.  As the months tickd by, and races continue to be cancelled, delayed, postponed, and modified, I thought about my quest to finish all six majors by my 50^th birthday.  The deferments, the cancellations were definitely going to impede my ability to grab slots in Toyko or London once things returned to normal.  There’s usually half a million people who apply for those lotteries in a normal year, but what now?  As for Boston, losing one, if not two years for charity runners will make it even harder to get one of those coveted spots, and I’m so busy trying to survive that running has taken a back seat, derailing my efforts to qualify.

I have five years to get into three major marathons.  I’m barely scraping by, financially, my mental health is a mess, and there are now millions of runners who didn’t get the spots they thought they’d get this year.  How on earth am I going to finish this quest?

Then I thought of my students, past, present, and future.  How many of them feel dumb at school?  How many hate doing homework because they just don’t even understand the lesson?  How many want to give up and say they can’t do chemistry or math?

Tutoring isn’t just about AP exams and letter grades.  It’s about helping these kids overcome challenges, solve problems, and learn how they learn so they can apply these skills for the rest of their life.  Odds are that you won’t have to use the ideal gas law or Rolle’s Theorem in your 40s, but the skills that got you through those assignments and tests, will.

Just like my quest; it is more about the journey more than the end result.

In 2021, I need to figure out how to do the grind when it’s something that isn’t easy or fun or exciting or interesting.  After some soul-searching, I came up with three things I’d like to accomplish this year for three very different reasons.  They are all going to take that grind, though in different ways:

1. British accent.  As a high school drama kid, I was always jealous of my classmates who could switch into a British accent without even thinking about it.  When I got a part in the fall play and had to do five lines in accent, I spent hours and hours listening to Brits read books on tape, trying to figure out the intonations and pronunciations, but never feeling like I got it right.  Now, with YouTube and Zoom and all sorts of tools (there has to be an app, right?), as well as maturity and wisdom, perhaps I can master something that I was convinced I couldn’t.
2. Daily routine.  It’s been a year, right?  As I navigated the roller coaster of part time work and furloughs, I saw a lot of my regular maintenance routines falling apart from running to brushing my hair every morning.  I’ve put down the list of things I do want to accomplish every day.  It may not be fun or exciting, but going through the steps to get my life reset will do wonders for my mental health.  (If you were wondering about running, it’s part of this routine.  Baby steps.)
3. Blogs and Coffee.  As part of my daily routine, I’m reading blogs I find on Twitter over my morning coffee.  I had a great idea a couple of days ago to use the hashtag #blogsandcoffee to share the blogs that I’m reading.  Now, I’ve had a lot of great ideas over the years that get lost on the wayside for a number of reasons, so my goal here is to post #blogsandcoffee every single day in 2021, even if it’s a tweet to say why there wasn’t a #blogsandcoffee.  Maybe it will develop a following, maybe it won’t, but at least I ground through the challenges and finished what I started.

Unlike most New Years resolutions, which have an endpoint, I am creating a focus, an intention, to grow as a person, regardless of whether or not I meet my goals.  If I figure out how to grind through things I don’t enjoy, it’s powerful—and it’s a power I can teach my students so they can succeed, whether it’s third grade math or AP Physics.

Also, rather than a personal, specific goal, it’s a theme we can all take together.  Let’s face it.  2020 was a struggle in many ways.  We survived, but not without damage.  We’re not the same people who started this year, but to continue to thrive, we need to continue to evolve.  We need to grind through our challenges, whether it’s AP Calculus or working from home or figuring out how to change the oil on the car.  What are you needing to grind through in 2021? 

Please, Don’t Fix Me

Last time, I talked about how I’m putting stuff I want out of my life on FB Marketplace.  I’ve had people over the past couple of years suggest to me that they would come over, clear out the stuff, and wouldn’t I feel so much better without the clutter?  Isn’t that just an easy thing to do, and then everything would be fixed?

To be honest, no.  This process of choosing an item, listing it, and selling it is giving me a great deal of pleasure.  As well as a few extra dollars for the savings account.  I enjoy the ability to give each item the time I need to make a decision, instead of having the stress of making hundreds of decisions in one day. 

Besides, why do I have to complete this project so quickly? 

I don’t have a spouse.  I don’t have children.  My cat just doesn’t care.  (Seriously, as long as she gets one spoonful of wet food with gravy, lap time, and scritches, she’s pretty happy.)

Nobody is depending on me to finish by a certain date, so it’s nice to have something that is completely on my terms, within my complete control, according to my plan.  So little in life is like that, and instead of stressed, I’m calmed by this process.  It’s been an adventure instead of a chore.

I mean, who doesn't want an antique rocking chair?

(Santa, lamp, and pan not included.)

Perhaps that’s why, when people ask me for marathon running advice, my response is simple:  own your training journey, because that’s what will take you through race day.  You need to do what makes sense for you, not what other people tell you to do.

I’m not running those 26.2 miles….you are, so you need to feel proud and determined and successful as you wait in the starting corrals.  That happens when you prepare on your own terms, taking the information you like and ignoring the information that doesn’t work for you. 

It’s such different advice than I’ve received through my journey in this world.  People like to fix problems, so when they hear about an issue, they often blurt out the solution that works for them, whether it’s why you’re stuck around a 5:30 marathon or have a cluttered house or are struggling with a relationship or unhappy at work or have a phone with 30% charge on it.  They so want to alleviate the anxiety in the air, and it worked for them, so why not everyone else?

Well, we’re all different.  All. Of Us. 7. Billion. Humans.  We are all going to have different dreams, different challenges, different belief systems, different ways of seeing a problem.  Your “simple” solution may not be the best for the person with ADD.  Or dyslexia.  And definitely not someone with OCD.

Instead of jumping to fix everyone else’s issues, why not just listen?  Why not just ask questions to help clarify?  Why not help the person find what works for them instead of telling them what they should do?  And if they say, “I’m okay, thank you,” let it go.

While the solution may seem completely obvious to you, there’s power in the process of problem solving.  When you give someone the space to own their solution, you give them the confidence to grow and learn and be even better than they ever imagined.  It’s an uncomfortable space, letting someone sit with their issue that appears easily solvable, but usually, the end result is beyond your expectations.

Instead of asking someone to conform to you, you’re empowering them to be exceptional.

So please don’t fix me.  I’m on my own path to healing, thank you very much, and as I grow from this process, great things will happen.  Well, at least a few hundred dollars from FB Marketplace sales….

My OCD as a Superpower

Just like my morning cup of coffee, I need to have every single step of my day organized in my head.  It allows me to go through everything smoothly, like a choreographed dance, calming and clearing my mind so I have the energy and focus to pursue my dreams.  It’s as satisfying as setting up a domino show, then watching it tumble:

Isn't that soothing to watch?  The order, the organization, the choreography....

Life, however, almost never operates that easily.  As things start falling off the rails, my head starts filling with anxious noise.  I’m thrown into a tizzy of multiple thought streams speeding across my neural net, rendering me unable to focus on any one item for more than a few seconds.  The noise will escalate until I can barely see or hear or feel the real world, my brain completely disconnected by the overloaded circuits.  I can even be so stressed that I struggle to breathe.

I need to take some time, calm my head, clear my brain, and reset the dominoes.  Sometimes, it’s just a few breaths or a walk around the block or completing an online survey or playing a video game or taking care of something that is hanging over me.  Other times, I escape to dreamland, wishing for a life without worry.  Occasionally, I can get so agitated that I have to lie down and take a nap just to avoid a major panic attack. 

While I’m doing all these things to soothe my overwhelmed, overloaded brain back to coherent thought, time continues to march forward, as do the schedules and deadlines and time limits that trigger my anxiety in the first place.  No wonder I’m always pressed—or stressed—for time.  I never have enough time to finish a project or respond to someone or get somewhere because it just takes more time than I have.

Time becomes my enemy, and as the clock ticks, so does my anxiety, and as everything churns inside me, I start having the urge to act impulsively.

Sigh.  The only thing worse than my relationship with time….is my relationship with impulsivity.

The beauty about having my head organized is feeling clear and calm and able to make thoughtful, reasoned decisions.  I love being thoughtful, being able to think things through, being able to plan my decisions and their ramifications. 

As I start stressing over how little time I have to get things done, my mind fills with panicked responses, ways to get the anxiety to clear as quickly as possible.  I no longer care about being thoughtful or kind or considerate.  I no longer care if I’m doing the job okay.  I no longer care about anyone else’s feelings.  I just want the chaotic mess out of my brain and back to calm and organized.

If I react to these impulsive feelings, it never ends well.  I’ve lied and cheated.  I’ve done work that was so careless and awful that it had to be redone.  I’ve said horrible, hurtful things to people.  I’ve made terrible mistakes.  I’ve destroyed things that I had so carefully built.  In the attempt to alleviate the chaos, I end up creating a bigger mess and losing even more time to the anger and panic.

I cannot give into this insanity, and yet, life often forces me to do so.  I’m filled with regret over the impulsive decisions I’ve made over the years, many of which haunt me decades later.   

Which brings me to my garage.  It’s filled with an eclectic collection of stuff my ex-boyfriend acquired in an attempt to start a reseller business, but never could get it off the ground.  What do you do when a global pandemic hits after you’ve drained your emergency savings?  You start selling things. 

Any day when I’m not working my other three (!) jobs, I’m in the garage, listing his random stuff online.  It’s actually been cathartic to go through this process of selling each item, feeling like I’m stepping closer to financial freedom.  However, I tend to be a little impulsive about pricing…..

I priced these cards from the 1970s for $5.  Whoops.

What do you expect happens when I am selling things like electronics and tools and collectables at bottom-barrel prices in a county with a population of 700,000?  Yup, my phone blows up like Jennifer Aniston’s did when she joined Instagram.  (Okay, maybe not that much, but I’ve gotten some serious empathy for those IG folks with millions of followers.)  it’s absolutely insane how crazed people get about a computer monitor I can’t guarantee works or a power drill without a battery, just because it’s only $5.

Most of the responses are male, and clearly impulsive.  They are willing to run out the door and fly straight to my house to pick up the item, lest I sell to someone else.  They offer more money than I’m listing in hopes that they can jump ahead in line.  Their overly forward, determined behavior to mow down every obstacle in their way is unsettling, to say the least, especially for someone is often already stressed and overwhelmed by time and impulsive behavior.

In this chaos, my OCD becomes my superpower, treating the madness with rigid rules to implement calm and organization.  My response to the impulsive insanity is on my timeline, a timeline that allows me to feel calm and organized.  If I feel the need to impulsively respond, I set the phone down and wait until I’ve thought through my response.  What’s amazing is by controlling the timeline and refusing to be impulsive, these guys calm down as well, becoming much easier to work with as they realize I’m going to be fair and considerate and thoughtful.  Probably why I’m a highly rated seller.

Now to harness this superpower and apply it to other aspects of my life.  And yes, to double my prices on Marketplace…..

Of Avengers and Presidents

Fall…is just the worst time of year for me.  Not only is the world losing the warmth and green and sun of summer, but September is the anniversary of my two longest relationships ending.  Just looking out the window at grey skies, seeing the dead leaves swirl in the chilly wind, makes me feel all the sadness in the world. 

September is also the anniversary of the passing of a college classmate, killed while training for the Chicago Marathon in 2003.  Even the excitement and happiness of fall marathon season is twinged with sadness of what could have been for him, and I find myself thinking about Scott a lot during the “taper tantrum,” the last few weeks of training where you rest your body before Marathon Sunday.

Cue in…escapism via Hollywood.  Without the usual distractions of marathons this year, I found myself coping by catching up on the entire Marvel Cinematic Universe.  As self-care, it was perfect mind-numbing fun, and hey, I might as well get the most out of my free trial of Disney+ before it ends, right?

The one thing I noticed throughout the movies is that, outside of the plot to assassinate the President in Iron Man 3, the President of the United States is a non-entity, to the point that only Iron Man 3 is the only time an actor portrays the President.  Congressmen, United Nations, Cabinet members, military officials, but no President.  The Winter Soldier is a political thriller where the President is completely irrelevant, relegated to a name on the wall in a Smithsonian exhibit. 

Shouldn’t Tony Stark have the President on speed dial?

Obviously, it’s Hollywood, and especially when you have something like 25 Avengers and who knows how many side characters in the last two films, there’s just not time—or plot—to include any sort of normal governmental response to events.  However, watching these films on the eve of a Presidential election, the lack of a President in 22 of the 23 MCU films stands out—and has me reflecting on the role of the President as defined in the Constitution.

The whole point of the President was for him (or her) not to become a dictator or a monarch.  He or she only carries one third of the power, sharing with the Supreme Court and Congress.  You can even argue, with their power to create laws and distribute funds, that Congress, a body of normal citizens elected by normal citizens, has slightly more power than the other two branches.  Rather than being led by one person, we are led by 545.  (President + Supreme Court + Congress)

In addition, the President is given a Cabinet of department Secretaries, who help manage the Executive Branch.  While the President appoints those Secretaries, these appointments are confirmed by the Senate.  While the President, often through the Secretary of State, negotiates treaties, they are not valid until the Senate approves them.  It’s no surprise that the Avengers, when it comes to the Sokovia Accords, have to deal with a Secretary of State confirmed by the Senate, rather than the President directly.

The tweets and posts and grams and snaps (as in chat, not Gauntlet) about our Presidential election tell a very different story.  There seems to be this mythos within the American people that the US President is the most powerful person in the world, a modern-day Queen Victoria, who can do anything they want with a sign of the pen.  My social media feeds oscillate between posts describing how a candidate can fix every problem in our country to how a candidate will rule by fiat if elected. 

The importance and weight we have put on electing a President is not unusual.  Since President Trump was elected, however, the amount of energy that has been given to every single Tweet or speech or action has been elevated.  The fear that the President can do whatever he wants, the anger and rage when the President does something undesirable, and the anger and rage of the people who are tired of the former’s anger and rage—it’s a constant stream of energy and attention.  However, nobody considers how all that energy is feeding the beast, inadvertently growing the power of someone who shouldn’t have all that much.  Perhaps I’ve just invented the next Marvel villain, a politician who feeds off of social media drama to the point of developing superpowers…

Seriously, people.  The Democratic Party has control of the US House, leaving the US Senate stuck between the President and the House.  (You want to know why Majority Leader Mitch McConnell is so wishy-washy?  He’s literally stuck between a rock and a hard place.)  The Supreme Court, even Trump’s own nominees, have shown independence in their decisions, continuing the history of taking each case as it is and comparing to the Constitution, rather than blindly following the President who appointed them.  The checks and balances are in place.  Our Constitution is working.  So why do so many Americans fear a President who can only have 30% of the power, and therefore, cannot do half of what he claims he can?

More importantly, why are you giving a man who clearly feeds off this negative attention so much brainspace in your life?

The President is not Thanos.  The President is….the President, limited by the Constitution.

So take a piece of wisdom from the MCU and stop putting so much energy into our President.  The entire House of Representatives is up for re-election.  One third of the Senate as well.  Local officials, who have a greater ability to fix the problems in your community are up for re-election as well.  All people who help limit the power of the person in the White House.

Voting, 2020 style...to be honest, I was there to help Mike Nerheim and Howard Cooper get re-elected as State's Attorney and Cororner more than I was interested in casting a vote for President.

That is, after all, what our Founding Fathers intended.  Who knew that the Avengers would be so wise in Constitutional law, paying attention to the people who actually held the power?

Welcoming in the Roaring 20s (and Mine Will Roar)

It’s been a year.  Well, it’s been a decade.  It’s hard to believe that when 2010 started, I was so looking forward to a precisely planned, perfect future.  That January, I attended a primary candidate forum….and everything changed.  It’s been a difficult journey, one that is hard to regret taking, but I’m still here, looking at 2020, and trying to figure out a new future.

Planning, planning, planning...for a fabulous future.

We’ve all had that moment when the rug was pulled out from under us.  For me, it was Labor Day, 2011, when the man I wanted to marry….told me our relationship was over.  It broke me, but looking back on it now, it led me to so much more.  The resulting depression led me to a therapist, which led me to understanding why my brain was wired the way it was, which led me to realize that how I was living my life wasn’t in synch with my brain wiring.

However, there was an even bigger revelation.  My mother, trying to maintain order in her own head, emotionally abused me.  It’s interesting, really, how a child sees their reality as “normal,” until they hit a point where they see there are other realities.  For me, it was working with a therapist who pointed out the times my mother, with her endless controlling behavior, crossed the line from being helpful to hurtful.  And hurtful she was.  Not only did I believe that her depiction of me was true, it had made me passive and controllable, which literally ate me up inside.  It’s her words, not mine, that I’ve said to myself in the mirror all these years. 

Due to both nature and nurture, my brain processes things differently than most people, but I’ve spent the last 45 years trying to fit my brain into a “normal” mold.  It hasn’t worked well, leaving me exhausted, frustrated, and feeling like a failure.  Now that I understand all of this, I can spend the 20s creating a life that fits me and my brain, then helping others do the same.  It seems so counter-intuitive that a country whose founding principles are all about accepting and tolerating differences…has so many people suffering from anxiety and depression because they feel too different.  Perhaps I can do something about that, but I can’t from where I am now.

I see where I want to be by 2029, but I am starting at the bottom of the mountain.  This year, my goal is to build a solid foundation from which I can tackle harder things.  It means creating financial security and stability.  It means retooling my house to be a place of relaxation and comfort.  It means cleaning out all the survival anxieties that cloud my decisions and sap my energy.  It means missing the run club’s annual run to Lake Michigan to instead hustle for income.  It means walking away from all the things I do to escape from the challenges and instead face them head-on.  It means working hard towards my goals, even when it’s not easy.

2020 is probably going to be my most challenging year, but I have all the support and resources I need to come out of it successful.  It’s time to make my 20s roar.

Mile by Mile: Life Lessons Learned Through Marathon Running

On Thanksgiving morning, I participated in my run club’s Tofurky Trot.  That’s right, Tofurky.  Last year, there was a discussion on the various area turkey trots (you know, those Thanksgiving morning community road races), and one of the vegans in the group joked that she had a Tofurky run at her house.  In typical Libertyville Running Club tradition, it happened.  Twice:

Anyway, I was running (well, trotting because we were chatting too much to consider ourselves racing) with two friends.  I’m working on growing my chemistry tutoring business, and the question of how that was going…..lead to AP exams and college choices and life in general and how we can apply our perspective about running to life. 

★☆★☆★

When you run a major marathon, you have to focus on your race.  The only thing that matters is when the chip on your shoe or race bib hits the mats, so worrying about how fast the people around you are going is anethma.  They might be pacing for a faster race.  You might see them in five miles, hitting a wall because they went out too fast.  They might have shown up late and ended up starting in the back instead of the super-speedy corral they were assigned.  You might have passed them earlier in the race because they stopped to use a porta potty.  Basically, you have no clue what their chip and pacing is saying, so there is no point in comparing yourself to them.

That’s true in life.  We spend so much of high school and college worrying about gpa and test scores and class rank, comparing ourselves to our peers.  My dentist had a son in my high school class, and when I would go for a cleaning, I would always be with the dental hygienist who also had a son in my class.  Both parents were very interested in my class rank, my ACT, what colleges I was interested in attending, and so on.  Their sons were great guys, but I’m a member of Mensa genius who was so smart as a 3 year old that I started kindergarten a year early *and* was in the gifted program *and* by high school, so ambitious about college that I fought for every extra credit point and A+.  I felt pressure, but it was so awkward to be in the dentist’s chair, having to point out that I’m a better student than their sons.  Especially when both of them had a lot of gifts that have made them successful today.  Just not being in the top 1% of their high school graduating class. 

With those comparisons, we stop running our life, our “race,” and try to keep up with everyone else.  However, when you ask someone 20 years later, they often regret the decisions that were influenced by external pressures, whether they be academic or romantic or financial.  Be you.  Run your own race.  Do your thing the way you need to do it.

That 2015 Chicago was looong!

Unless you are Eliud Kipchoge, a marathon is long.  Three hours is considered a “fast” time, and some people will be out there for seven or eight hours.  A lot can happen in an hour, never mind eight, and one of the mantras in marathon running is “just put one foot ahead of the other.”  I definitely had to say that to myself throughout both Chicago and New York this year, as I didn’t know how long my body would last. 

When I came home, I realized I would have to apply that mantra to life.  I had quit my job.  I had broken up with my boyfriend of four years.  My house was a cacophony of stuff my ex had accumulated, stressing me to the point where my brain couldn’t figure out how to do things like make dinner or brush my teeth without an anxiety attack.  The focus on the trip and the marathon had taken some of the pressure off these things, but now I had to face reality.  A giant, scary, overwhelming reality.

Instead of being caught up in the place I found myself, I just needed to put one foot ahead of the other.  I had to figure out what was stressing me out the most, what the smallest step I could take to alleviate that stress, and then accomplishing that step.  Lather, rinse, repeat.  It has been all about finding success in forward progress, no matter how small, and cherishing the stress relief associated with it. 

We get so caught up in not being “there” yet that instead of focusing on that next little step, we stop and quit.  Just keep moving forward.  Keep learning, growing, progressing, trying.  You are getting closer.

★☆★☆★

In the course of a race that lasts hours, even for the fastest in the world, a lot can happen.  The weather is often unpredictable and inconsistent.  The meal you ate the night before suddenly doesn’t agree with you.  The start is earlier or later than your normal training times, so you have to modify your nutrition plan.  You have to be able to roll with the punches and adjust, rather than pining over what didn’t go right.  That was my New York experience in a nutshell, having to make decisions and game plans on the fly as my body wasn’t reacting as I expected. 

There are days when you get up early and make a perfect bullet journal page….just to have something happen that causes it to fly out the window.  For me, that’s like setting up an ornate domino show, and having something knock the whole thing down before you get a chance finish the design.  I’m back to square one and the first domino.  I really have to stop, breathe, regroup, and figure out how to go forward now that the plan is gone. 

Life constantly doesn’t go as planned, and most of the time, we don’t get to start over again.  We get stuck at that point, not knowing how to get back on track to a rigid set of ideas and rules of what we want, rather than looking at where we are and retooling.  Be adaptable to changes, especially changes that are outside of your control.    

★☆★☆★

Running a marathon is an all-day, if not all-weekend event.  You have spent months thinking about this weekend, planning this weekend, purchasing items (and often travel) for this weekend, so it makes sense that there’s also a sense of anxiety that something won’t go as planned.  Even the most veteran marathon runners feel those nerves, and back in 2015, I let those nerves get the better of me in Chicago.  My head started to control my body, and my body started to shut down.  I did set an 8 min PR, but it would be three years until I would have the experience to quiet the nerves and crush Chicago.

There are plenty of people who let their nerves get in the way of success.  The college student so afraid of public speaking that they cannot give the presentation required for their degree.  The job seeker so afraid a job won’t be perfect enough that their non verbal behavior blows an interview.  The person who walks away instead of having a difficult conversation.  The woman at the bar who notices an attractive man, but is too nervous of making a fool of herself to approach him and say hello.    

We often think that our anxieties and nerves are a weakness to suppress, wallowing in self-pity over our failures.  Accept those nerves as part of being human.  Learn how to overcome them. 

Wait, there's something new here!

Another mantra of marathon running is “don’t change anything on race day.”  The idea is that if you figured out what worked in training, race day is not the time to try something new.  While yes, a major change on race day can cause a lot of problems, great runners are willing to take those risks in hopes of going beyond what they think they can do.  In New York, I tried compression socks for the first time on race day, and it probably was the smartest thing I could have done.  I also try to keep my nutrition plan flexible, risking that whatever is on course might not agree with me, over becoming overly dependent on a specific product schedule.

It’s the perfect metaphor for life.  Many people get stuck in this plan of how life should be that they fear the risks they could take to achieve greater goals.  We stay in jobs we don’t love, with people we don’t love, doing things we don’t love because it’s safe.  It’s easy.  It’s predictable.  We create a bubble around us where nothing is difficult or challenging or scary, to the point where they cannot tolerate anything that changes their universe.

However, that rigid adherence to what is planned and familiar keeps us from growing and improving, which comes from taking risks and failing.  The runners who are so quick to tell me they have every detail about their marathon planned are often the ones who struggle improving their time.  And in life, the people who stay in their comfortable bubble often ruminate about how they wish their lives were different, even as I see them actively reject anything unfamiliar.  Break your bubble.  Try new things.  Meet new people.  Challenge yourself.  Fail.  Learn from failure.  Grow. 

★☆★☆★

Finally, it’s not about one race.  Your first marathon is usually the most exciting.  Everything is new and different and adventurous.  Your time will be your personal best, since it is your first.  The process naturally gets you in shape, and you see your speed and endurance improve.  Your confidence builds, and you become ready to tackle greater things in your life.  (Did you see Brittany Runs a Marathon?)  Life is good!

That initial improvement comes from starting with nothing.  Eventually, you’ll plateau, have a setback, or fight injury.  Running isn’t fun.  You’re slower.  It hurts.  Your friends on Strava seem to be flying past you in their own quests to run PRs.  Many runners hit this point and quit, but the ones who figure out the challenge, make the changes, and reboot can go further and faster.

My largest challenge is my head.  I used to feel so slow that I would be bored to tears during training, and that would translate to going out too fast at the start of the race, to fight that boredom.  By mile 15, I was spent, walking, and even more slow and bored as the race could not go fast enough.  I decided to take a couple years off of racing marathons, but continuing with the training.  Slowly, I improved to the point where those 22 mile training runs seemed easy—and suddenly, so did my marathons.  I’ve gone from a consistent 5:30 finisher to a consistent 5 hour finisher, breaking 5 hours twice.  It took years, four years, of slow progress, setbacks, and challenges to get to this place.

I’m in the same spot in my life.  I know where I’m going, but it doesn’t seem to be moving fast enough to get there.  I feel like I’m plodding along, keeping my head afloat, and every ounce of forward momentum turns to a setback.  I know I’m being challenged, and I need to keep retooling and practicing and failing and learning and growing.  I need to accept that this process could take years, or even a decade, so I need to celebrate every step forward and overcome every setback.  Just like I believe I’m capable of being a faster marathoner, I am capable of living the life of my dreams.

We get so focused on success that we get demoralized and derailed by the first glimmer of imperfection, that first challenge or obstacle.  However, it’s the failure that causes improvement.  Don’t allow setbacks to hold you back.  Identify the roadblocks on your path and figure out how to overcome them.

Breakthrough, and first sub-5!

So runners, what say you?  What life lessons have you learned from running marathons, 5k’s or ultras?  What do you want to pass along to others?

Gratitude for Thanksgiving Day

Inspired by a Facebook post of a friend who lost her husband of 38 years, here is what I am grateful for this Thanksgiving holiday: 

• The right diagnosis for why my brain works the way it does, so I can figure out how to make my life work for me, rather than struggle trying to make me work to have a normal life.
• Strength to walk away from toxic relationships in my life, even when it was safer to stay.
• Passion for marathon running and writing, healthy addictions to deal with the challenges life throws my way.
• Friends who have reached out, supported me, and became my family, even as life got crazier and crazier. 
• Life lessons that were earned from the difficult times, as well as the personal growth that came from them.
• Discovering a voice that has been silent way too long, and the confidence to make it heard.
• Peace in my soul that I am exactly where I am supposed to be, replacing the empty longing that comes from fantasies.
• Hope that fuels the pursuit of my dreams, and dreams that are worth pursuing.
• Looking in a mirror and loving the woman I see in it.

In the face of so much wrong and bad and difficult and challenging in our worlds, we still can find so many things that are good.  Stop and think about your life.  What is on your gratitude list this year?