Redemption, Metaphor, and Running

Redemption: deliverance, rescue, atonement.

As I worked through an 8 mile run this morning, this word kept pounding in my head as my feet pounded the pavement. Today’s run was a redemption of sorts. Just two days ago as I finished 5 ½ miles at having head out at 4AM I could barely lift my right leg. I was experiencing a severe strain in my right groin. Well with plenty of Aleve, stretching, and a 17 mile bike ride yesterday, I was able to bounce back pretty well today. But make no mistake about it, each time out is a journey, and with 3 weeks to go I am feeling the mental strain far greater than anything else with so many hours training.

Metaphor: something used, or regarded as being used, to represent something else; emblem; symbol.

Running, training for this impending ½ marathon experience has taken on a metaphoric meaning like few things have in my life.  First, I have trained, worked out my entire life from junior high on, so the working out part has not been a problem. Second, I do have impeccable mental toughness or stubbornness, so working through difficult things gives me some kind of weird or odd pleasure. But this endeavor has touched many aspects of my life.

I have had to re-prioritize things, put some things on hold to allow the time to train and rest. I have had to work through the repetitiveness of day after day, mile after mile training pushing my body for a different kind of endurance. As I have shared before, the majority of my trainings, my workouts for 35+ years have centered around wrestling, running 3 to 5 miles as fast as I can and lifting weights. Which leads to me to this point, I really do not have the body type of a distance runner, long, lanky, thin, streamlined. No, here I am short, compact, not so thin, built for resistance, meaning not real fast! I think you are starting to see what I mean by this “being a journey”!

And it is the journey of 4AM runs, 2+ hour runs on Saturdays, being grouchy, irritable, tired, aching, hating with a passion the start of a run, and being overcome with stupid, strange emotions as I finish knowing I am accomplishing something I set out to do, which is what this is all about.

This doing isn’t to impress anyone and it certainly is in no way trying to compare to what anyone else has done or is doing. No, it is something I chose to do, and just like with life, I get my ass out of bed every day, face my challenges, work through them one by one like one mile after another, feeling good one day, shitty the next, often by noon wanting to crash but knowing I can’t, knowing that no one is going to hand me anything, do anything for me to help me cross that finish line in 3 weeks but me. Just like life, it is up to me, and I know I’m going to do it all over again tomorrow. No excuses!

Oh what a journey!