I've been wondering if perhaps I should give up on this marathon thing.
I've been training since September. I'm 85% sure I can do it. I'm just not sure if I want to.
I can do sixteen miles. Isn't sixteen miles enough? Do I really need to push and pound and bruise my body in pursuit of a goal that I have no real need to achieve?
When do we find the need to stop pushing ourselves? Why do we feel we must do impossible things? Isn't life on its own difficult enough? I've certainly found it a challenge so far.
I know myself well enough to know that I am attracted to impossible causes. There is something about me that enjoys the pain of a stretched out heartbreak. Anyone who has been priviledged enough to bystand my love life knows this.
Is running a marathon like being in a bad love affair?
Am I trying to prove something? If so, to who? Because I can't help feeling that the people I am trying to prove something to in life are ex-loves and ex-friends and people whose opinions shouldn't possibly matter. The people who love me and surround me are the ones I don't need to prove anything to.
Am I trying to prove something to myself? I was convinced of this for awhile. I have a deep and abiding fear of being mediocre. I want to do extraordinary things. And I've never been a very independent person. So if I can run 26.2 miles by myself...that means I can do anything by myself, right?
But I never want to be as alone as I felt today approaching mile fifteen. I took my one minute walk break, and I started to cry. It is not possible to cry after running almost fifteen miles. You don't have the energy, the breath, or the tears. So you walk and heave, walk and heave.
If something is so horrid that you can't even cry through it, isn't it something that you don't want to be doing?
I don't want to be alone at all in life. I want to be surrounded by the people I love forever. There's no shame in that. Independence is overrated.
And I lost my gloves today- the pretty blue and green ones with the embroidered flowers. And I have an irrational fear of bears and a perhaps rational one of being raped. Plus, if you must know (and you really don't need this info), most of the skin underneath my boobs has completely rubbed off.
Only a crazy person with a masochistic streak would run a marathon.
And maybe that's what I am.
It isn't all bad. Miles three through seven are really rather nice.
And I'm so close. I'm a little more than a month away. Next week, I run eighteen miles. The week after that, it's twenty-something. And then I start decreasing the running again, to prepare for the big day.
And once it's done, it's done. I have this accomplishment for the rest of my life. But it won't put food on the table or a writing contract in my hands. It won't bring honor upon my family or pay off my credit card bills.
I'm practically there already. I could do this. But why would I want to?
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3 comments:
I think:
There is a point in every journey where (if we are introspective speculative types) we wonder where we're headed and why. There will always be other things we could be doing, and the reasons we chose the particular path we're on are unclear, if present at all.
But--you have come so very far. And I am 100% sure you can do it. And if you decide not to, that's cool. You've already been an inspiration (to me, at the very least... but I'm sure to others as well).
Perhaps fighting it out in your head is actually harder than the running.... maybe that's the point.
Ah, a source of inspiration on a less than exciting day. Since you ARE a female cousin of mine, I never thought I would say this, but you just got my heart racing and my adrenaline pumping prior to 9 AM (not in that, way you sick pervert, we are from MD, not West Va). Keep up the good work, and perhaps you will want to run the race for the cure with me when it comes up in the fall?
I've been feeling like this too...the essential question of WHY? Why do anything? Why get up? Why go to work? Get dressed? Breath in and out? You have to do the things that make you feel your best. And if running this marathon makes you more confident in yourself then Heck! Yes! You have to do it. I'll even stop making fun of you...
I'm proud of you no matter what you do.
And maybe you've inspired me to run like a baby-race. Like, a 5K, or a 1K....or down the block to the Jamba Juice. Baby steps...
<3
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