Sometimes while I’m running, even 3 or 4 miles, I try to re-create the pain of an Ironman Run in my mind. It’s not easy, or likely possible, but I dig deep for that feeling. It’s elusive, and more or less, unexplainable.
I’m reading “What I Talk About When I Talk About Running,” by Haruki Murakami, and I think he explained it pretty well when he described his feeling while running at 62 mile Ultramarathon:
“All I can see is the ground three yards ahead, nothing beyond. My whole world consists of the ground three yards ahead. No need to think beyond that. The sky and wind, the grass, the cows munching the gras, the spectators, cheers, lake, novels, real it, the past, memory — these mean nothing to me. Just getting me past the next three yards — this was my tiny reason for living as a human. No, I’m sorry — as a machine.”
Why would I want that feeling in the first place? I think it’s a pretty valid question and I’m not convinced there’s a logical explanation. I suppose it has something to do with being prepared, but we can’t really control our future.
Two times I’ve climbed off a one-hundred-twelve mile bike ride with aspirations of running a marathon. Both times the feeling was different.
At Wisconsin, I could barely walk and the thought of running 26 miles was laughable. But somehow, I pulled it off and crossed the line in ecstacy.
At Louisville, I actually felt pretty good, and had my running legs very quick, but they fell apart just as fast. I blew up in the heat and was overwhelmed with relief when I heard Mike Reilly shout my name.
But, both times, I remember feeling like I was in another world. A very small world, three yards in front of me. It was less like running than searching the deepest places of my being to manage the pain.
Wisconsin was like a Chinese water drip torture. A consistent, nagging pain. Step after step I hurt just a slight bit more and my mind somehow won. I felt like a champion.
Louisville was more like a haunted house where I never knew what lurked around the next corner. Sometimes it was a creepy old lady tantalizing my nerves in her rocking chair, others it was Jason in his hockey mask. My heart and emotions were all over the board and by the time I ran down 4th Street and crossed the line, all of my fears had washed away.
For some reason, those emotions are fleeting. In that moment I had no questions about who I was or why I would do such a thing. But the lights fade and the medal tarnishes. In the big picture that finish line is no different than those thousands of 3-yard-moments I experienced along the way.
And I guess that’s the point. I will never be able to recreate those feelings and I’m probably best to leave them be while I embrace new ones.
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