The Doubt

Ever since I started "training" in March, my pace has slowed little by little as I've increased my weekly mileage. It really started when my long runs got longer than 10 miles. And what happened this week? I have all of a sudden started running faster! Tuesday night I busted out a fairly hard 5 miles and followed that up with a strong 8 the next evening. Tonight my 5 miles (that I perceived to be taking fairly easily) ended up being the fastest I've finished that distance all year. I ran an even faster pace than I raced at just a month ago! This is just the boost of confidence I need with an 18 mile run on the horizon for Saturday and being only 6 weeks away from the marathon.

I had an epiphany tonight on my run. As everyone knows, running is so much more a mental game than it is a physical one. A lot of people are physically capable of enduring miles of running but few, except trained runners, are mentally strong enough to do it. By "mentally strong enough" I mean, able to give no heed to the discomfort or invitations to give up. While I run, I obviously think about a lot. When I have a despairing thought, either related to my ability to finish my run or my ability to do something in life in general, I instantly feel my pace slow. It's like someone pulled the breaks. Until I combat or excuse the thought, running is horrible and I find no motivation to do it. Conversely, I can keep myself sustained through discomfort by actively giving myself positive self-talk like "This doesn't hurt. It feels good. I'm strong. I'm trained. And I'm getting stronger right now." I become so focused creating a positive perspective that I've dulled my perception of the pain and discomfort.

Negative thoughts (i.e. doubt) while running manifest themselves instantaneously in a slowed pace. It is obvious to connect the thought to the resulting effect. In life, it's a little more difficult to draw lines from our thoughts to the behavior resulting from them. But I guess if we compare life to a race of endurance, it makes sense that what I experience running relates to the race of life. I wonder what would change if I maintained the same level of focus and the same deterrence to doubt in my everyday life as I have to do when I run. Take home lesson: Doubting is the precursor to stopping and giving up. And stopping is the worst spot to be in.

Anyone who knows me at all knows my favorite movie in the world, hands down, is Touching the Void. And I just found a clip of my favorite part on youtube! The story follows two young men who set off to climb an icy peak in Peru but suffer an almost fatal setback on their descent. When one of the climbers becomes stuck alone in a crevasse he can't pull himself out of, he makes a difficult choice. I LOVE what he says about choosing as related to surviving. I love how tenderly he describes his fears and imagining what an experience like that would feel like. I think about hard choices I've had to make in life and how figuratively, I felt like I was lowering myself into an endless crevasse, just like he did. And doesn't it seem like we're called to do that in life? To say, "I don't see how this is going to help anything but it's the only real option so here goes." Anyway, I'm sharing it. Be warned, the language is a bit rough...