Dear AAC Members
Some of you have seen this but I felt it was too good not to share with everyone. Thanks to Carl Liebenberg for sending it through to him. He received it from a runner in Brazil and it just so perfectly describes why we run.
I want to share something with you that running has done for me. Not just running, but running long distances.
Running is the hardest sport I have ever taken on. I play tennis, I ski double blacks and jump off cliffs, I road and mountain bike for long distances, and nothing is as hard as running. Nothing is as “easy” as running either…you get up and go for a run, anywhere….
But running requires an incredible amount of mental strength, focus, dedication, sacrifices, patience, consistency and discipline. You get on a bike and you can go for days, when you get tired of pedaling, you don’t on a downhill, but when you run, you have to run the entire time….there is no rest, you have to find a way to rest and recover without actually resting, and it takes a long time to find that spot on any run over 15 miles for me at this stage. If you start now, that number drops to 2-3 miles on a 5 mile run….
So running a marathon is a big deal. Millions of people do it every year but it still is an incredible thing to finish a marathon. Physically and mentally, you get pushed to the limit.
You get out of it as much as you put into it. It is a great life metaphor.
You need to be your own motivator, you need to find within yourself your own source of strength and that is not easy to do either, specially when you are tired and sore…thoughts of giving up take over and you start thinking: why am doing this anyway, I don’t need this, I’m hurting, I’d rather be comfortable on my couch….you want that easy way out so badly, just like in any area of our lives…when you know things will be hard but you really don’t know how hard they really are until you find yourself overwhelmed with pain….
While running I have cracked up laughing and also broke down in tears, because everything comes out…all your emotions.
And the most important lesson I got out of running is called: “a wall”, when you hit a wall, you have all those negative thoughts going through your head telling you to quit for a while, and you are fighting them and then all of a sudden your body simply turns around and locks up on you….almost as like saying: I don’t care how much you worked hard for this, what this all means to you, I’m not moving another inch and there is nothing you can do!
That is the hardest place you can find yourself, because it can happen on mile 22 of a marathon, and you have only 4.2 miles to go and a lot of people can’t get passed it….
I learned the only way to get passed it is by letting go…which is a lesson in life that we all should master but to me only little kids know how to do it…kids don’t keep grudges and resentments, and they forgive themselves and others with an incredible ease…
In running you need to let go of all the hard days you put in when you hit that wall (18-20 weeks running 6 days a week, cross training 3 days a week is hard, eating right (giving up treats and wine), hydrating, taking a pass on fun nights out because you need to sleep and rest because you have 14 miles to run tomorrow….wouldn’t you say?) when you hit a wall you need to stop, regroup, slow down, sometimes even walk, until your body allows you to get back at it again, if it does…it is like competing against yourself for your personal best because yourself is all you have control of and hitting a wall teaches you that you actually don’t have even that….
It’s almost like finding the bittersweet spot where you realise there is a whole lot you can do on your own but “how foolish of you to think anything can be done on your own”….as special and precious as you are, you are also small and insignificant and absolutely replaceable…as crazy as it sounds..
With all of that said, there is a very deep feeling of self confidence and self appreciation when you set a goal and you reach it, may it be a 5K, 10K, half or full marathon…you feel like there is very little you can’t do, and what I learned from running that I can apply to my life is that I am strong, I can let go, I can focus, I can push through incredible pain, I can find within myself a way to put on foot in front of the other and keep going.
So, it is raining outside and I have to run 10 miles, and I am going to do it because there is a beautiful ongoing lesson out there waiting out there for me.
Something to ponder on your next run or walk.
Cheers
Sue
Sue Ullyett
Tel: 021-671 0527
Cell: 083 305 4842
Fax: 0866846656
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