And the Ease it Brought

In October 2009 I ran my first marathon in Portland, Maine. It was a life-changing day and resulted in a finishing time far beyond my imagined goal time of 4:00. I finished in 3:38:17, a time fast enough, at age 45, to qualify for both Boston and New York City marathons. 

After that I, in pretty quick succession, ran four more marathons, ever chasing that fast finishing time. My Boston marathon was just over a minute slower than my Portland time and I felt oddly defeated coming off my Portland high. Over the next three years—two NYC Marathons and one Steamtown—my times, still good, increased with each race. Try as I might, a race faster than my first marathon eluded me again and again.

I raced other distances too, and similarly did  not have much success beating my early race times. I was fast out of the block as a new runner, and I began to worry that I had hit at my peak and did not have the guts it would take to increase my speed. A small gleam of hope began this past spring when I succeeded—with a lot of training and coaching—at the Brooklyn Half, in setting a new PR at that distance.

2013 Steamtown
Photo Credit: Carol Lowry

Yesterday I ran my 6th marathon, Steamtown in Scranton, Pennsylvania. My official finish time was 3:33:33, nearly five minutes faster than Portland and almost 25 minutes faster than my last 26.2 mile run. 

So much to say about yesterday. The first 18 I ran with a cousin, Scott Lowry, who kept me strong at a sub-8:00 min/mile pace. After Scott moved forward, I found the strength within me to continue despite aching legs and flagging spirit. I fought off my desire to stop several times in the last eight miles. I heard Scott, as I passed him later, tell me it was my day and to keep going. I kept checking my watch and knew that a personal record was possible as I multiplied in my head the distance by my pace. As my wonderful Coach, April, had suggested, I checked in with myself every few miles and found each time that the pain was not enough reason to stop. When an onlooker said, "Go! Your are in sight of a 3:40, I wanted to yell back that he should check his facts because there was no way I was coming in that late."

Still enough left, I kicked in for the last mile. Was alone in the long chute to the finish line. Felt my body strong and fast and sure. Heard the announcer tell the crowds that Rachel Pratt from Brooklyn was finishing. Checked the clock as my foot hit the mat. Knew that I had, finally, beaten my fastest marathon. Tears started to fall as soon as my foot crossed the line. Never before have I cried at any finish.

And later, sitting on the deck by the shore of Newton Lake with a beer in my hand I felt a kind of ease that I have never in my life experienced. The moment was perfect. There was nothing to do. Nothing to prove. I am. All is right and good.

What I Learned from 31 Days of of Running

Several months ago, December 2012 to be specific, I challenged myself to a daily run for the entire month to mark my fourth anniversary of running (see previous post for a chronicle of those days).  On January 2nd of this year I summed up the experience.  It is worth reading again for me whenever I'm feeling low motivation.  Hope others find something in it too. I plan to expand on several of the points in later blog posts.  So here goes:

Some of what I learned during my month of daily running (in no particular order): 

1. Clutter will, if I let it, crowd out what is important. I must focus and be vigilant and protective of my time. 
2. Using time in important ways renews and increases my capacity for everything else.
3. Breath is the root of it all.
4. It takes very little effort (what's a month, really?!) to make enormous changes in body and mind.
5. Even a treadmill can teach me something important if I open my heart and let it.
6. It's 95% in my mind. If I approach life with a negative attitude, then I will continue to be negative about it. If I tell myself I love it--like I did 4 years ago after 25 years of telling myself I hated running--then love it I will.
7. Joy is without bound and can be found in the strangest places.

31 Days of Running: December 2012

To mark four years of running, I ran every day during the month of December and chronicled those runs in Facebook.  Re-reading them now puts a smile on my face, makes me want share them with everyone again through this blog and, inevitably, makes me want to start another streak.  What's missing here are the comments posted by friends.  The dialogue, support, cheering, and two-directional inspiration might very well be the richest part of the experience and I will try to find a way to capture and include everyone's words at some point.  

For now, here is my part of the dialogue:

December 1:  Four mile run. Fast, hard, and every step full of joy. This month is my four year anniversary of running. I am so grateful that I can run and that running brings me such incredible clarity, wisdom and joy

December 3:  This month marks four years of running for me. In running's honor, I decided I will lace up and run every single day of the month. Need strength today to drag myself out onto Brooklyn's streets at 10:30pm after a full day of travel and work in Baltimore.

December 4:  December. Four days, four runs. Resolve is strong and enjoying this simple goal.

December 5:  Interesting to observe all of the complications in normal life that get in the way of running. So easy to just set running aside for another day. Along with normal work and life, today is boiler installation and no hot water for post-run shower and the call from school telling me to pick up my sick kid. Then there is work travel. And deadlines. And...

December. Five days; five runs. May not win the mother-of-the-year award, but got in four miles thanks to Grant Newton who stayed with my sick boy.

December 6:  December. 6 days; 6 runs. Got it in early this morning by running home after dropping my daughter off at school. Complicated by Jonathan's early morning shift at the food coop and a still-sick son. It does indeed take a village: Thanks again Grant Newton for being the adult in the house.

December 7:  December. A full week of daily running completed with an 8-mile run after school drop-off, bringing my total weekly mileage to 32 miles. Today's run finished in a light, cold, glorious rain!

December 8:  If it weren't for Facebook, Kathy Kline and Janet Gottlieb I would be still in my bathrobe and slippers. Jingle jog!

Four mile race on home turf. With bells on.

Third place in age/gender in the Jingle Bell Jog with a time of 29:52. Felt like a good run and it was. My week of running? My home-turf advantage? Not knowing I was going to run until 2 hours before?

December 9:  December. 9 days of running and the muddy running shoes as proof.

December 10:  Squeezed in a short two miles today. Busy and the other child home from school, so ran one mile to the school bus stop and the second mile home with my boy. Love that: 1) a mile is easy for him at 8 years old; and 2) even better, he smiles with joy when he runs, too!

December 11:  My streak continues. Eleven days and running.

December 12:  My mind is telling me to run 12km today; my tired legs are telling me to run 1.2km. Wonder who will win the argument.

12 days of running...

December 13:  Thirteen days, thirteen runs. Sick today but got to believe I would be sicker if my lungs weren't so happy and healthy these days.

December 14:  (The day of the shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School)
It's like when my eight year old son's emotions are all mixed up and he can't sort them out and screams and cries. Anger, sadness, loss of control. What have we become and how do we get back to where we can live with ourselves.

Oh and I ran again today.  Big friggin deal.

December 15:  Yesterday marked two full weeks of daily running. I'm keeping the mileage low (mostly 4 mile runs with a few shorter and longer ones mixed in), but even with that, I have covered nearly 60 miles of terrain. While it is a challenge to fit the runs into my already full days, once I am out there, all of life's clutter falls away.

Four mile run on day 15 with a stop for hot cider at the Grand Army Plaza farmer's market. I love Brooklyn!

December 16:  Perfect running weather on Day 16--40 degrees and drizzly! The payoff for the first mile of slow, hard effort was five miles of pure endorphin-filled bliss.

December 17:  Four lunchtime miles, again in cool grey drizzle. Found myself looking into the eyes of everyone I passed and smiling. Think I need to see and feel the good in humanity today.

December 18:  Running today is my transition breath from mom sending kids off to school to CEO wrapping up last details before I hop in an airplane.

December 19:  This morning's run. — at Lake Shore Drive.

According to Wikipedia, in most humans (especially females), the abdominal external oblique is not visible, due to subcutaneous fat deposits and the small size of the muscle. Hmmmm.....19 straight days of running, I will never have a waistline, but "hello" obliques, and vastus lateralis, and....

It is Wednesday so this must be Baltimore — at Baltimore - Washington Airport.

December 20:  Snuck in today's run at midnight last night, on the hotel treadmill. Felt like a good way to shake off the long day of meetings and travel. Work travel is my real daily running test and so far so good...

Have been called many things in my lifetime, but my two favorite during this month of running have been "machine" and "recalcitrant." Does that make me a "recalcitrant machine?!"

December 21:  Blurry proof.

Three weeks, 21 days, 85 miles. Today cranked up the hotel treadmill and found my breath floating calm and evenly, separate from my body. An amazing gift at the start of the day.

December 22:  Day 22, five miles in the streets of Brooklyn and around Prospect Park. Great run--strong body and deep, even breaths. But something is blooming out there, my allergies kicked in, and I haven't stopped sneezing since.

December 23:  Day 23, squeezed in my quick four mile route down Eastern Parkway and around the perimeter of the Brooklyn Botanic Garden. The tired from the beginning of the month is gone, replaced by a feeling of joy and expansiveness.

December 24:  Dragging myself away from Christmas Eve was a challenge. But did it. Four miles on the 24th of December.

December 25:  Seven perfect miles in the sunshine. The final gift was catching and passing the tall athletic guy 15 or so years younger. Granted, 6:30 min miles looked easier for him than they did for me but I still passed him.

December 26:  Santa knows me so well--new running socks in my stocking. Took them out for a test drive of 4 miles on December 26th.

December 27:  27th day of December; four miles. 40 degrees and drizzling. In my book, perfect running weather. Character flaw? I love bitter green leafy vegetables, strong bitter coffee, and don't like movies or books with happy endings, either.

December 28:  Four weeks of daily running, racking up 115 miles in 28 days. Today squeaked in a very early 2-miles to my 6am co-op shift. Trudging through the cold and dark rather than flying. Still though, I can't stop smiling these days. 28 days of running turned on the endorphin faucet and it now doesn't turn off.

December 29:  Six+ miles in the cold drizzle with darkness setting in during the last two. Astounded by the changes in my body and breath over the past 29 days. Both legs and lungs know what to do without effort. Light and fast and full of that joy.

December 30:  Ten miles on the 30th day of December. Cold and windy out there. Got hit by a huge gust at the top of a hill in the park and actually laughed out loud.

Anyone want to run with me tomorrow? Brooklyn. 4 to 6 miles. Flexible on time.

December 31:  Setting out in a moment on my last run of the year and last (scheduled) run of this month long streak. Woo hoo!

Pre-run me.

Today's 5.5 mile run puts me just under 140 miles for the month. An amazing experience that I am still processing. I am a stronger runner and feel tremendous joy and balance in my life. Not sure what's next but stay tuned. I am grateful for friends and family who listened while i talked incessantly about running, helped me make the time for runs and encouraged and inspired me every day. Grateful is what I am.

How Running is Like Picking Blueberries

I am at my childhood summer home for the four weeks of July. During the time here I spend my days leading my non-profit organization via wireless and cell phone. While much is similar to my day-to-day in Brooklyn, there are some distinct differences, like the bugs crawling across me at as I work at my lakeside desk, a nine-mile drive to get Fedex deliveries, an occasional lunchtime swim to the float to cool off, a snake that crossed my path today while walking toward the dock for a quick break, and frustratingly poor internet and phone reception when I need it the most. The pace is a little slower and I have an opportunity I seldom have in non-summer days to clear out my in-basket, read old emails, and to think.

But mornings and evenings!

Many mornings here begin with an early run through the surrounding hills. The air is humid and filled with the smell of vegetation. The path is either uphill or downhill with nothing in between. Miles and miles of hills. Knowing that the payback for a glorious downhill glide is several miles of grueling uphill doesn't detract from either experience. My body and lungs are stronger in this place than anywhere else. I dodge insects and butterflies and push my grateful body onward. 

This evening I picked blueberries while wading at the water's edge, with rippled sandy bottom under my feet and warm blue skies and setting sun above. I joke that the blueberry picking gene is passed down from generation to generation in our family. I joke, but I believe it to be true. I am a harvester and I have always found tremendous joy and peace in these moments. Tonight my children picked by my side. Then they stopped to dig clay out from the bottom of the lake, talking to each other about finding a ridge of clay and pulling it free from its sandy habitat. 

Four decades of picking berries. Four decades of digging clay. My children's bodies are learning what mine has known for so long:  the softer feeling underfoot that signals clay; the hushed noise of water lapping against lily pads; the pleasure of wave-rippled sand; how to lower a high branch and tell which berries are blue while squinting into the sun; the throaty sound made by a bullfrog in the nearby cove. 

Only four years of running.  I sometimes think I know my running self, but my knowledge of myself as a runner pales in comparison to four decades of knowing the sounds and sensations of this lake.  Real knowing takes years. At times I am sad to have come to running so late in life. I have missed far too many runs. I am a very good beginner, but struggling through training and races, awkwardly uncertain, easily discouraged or distracted. My expectations of my running self have not been realistic and they likely make it harder for me grow as a runner.

Patience? Solitude? Years and years of it? Grasping at the lessons that I know must lie in the blueberries. 

My Name is Rachel and I Love Racing

Tomorrow I am running the Brooklyn Half Marathon. From my vantage point, it seems the entire borough is abuzz with anticipation. 30,000 runners will assemble a half mile from my house and will stream through Prospect Park with a fabulous finish on the Coney Island Boardwalk. 

Deep in my heart I am a runner, and over the past four years I have successfully and successively convinced myself that I love:  1) running, after hating it for 25 years; 2) running on hills; 3) running in the rain, possibly my favorite weather condition; 4) running in the cold; and even 5) running on treadmills on occasion.  

But until today I have been unable to talk myself into a deep love of racing.  I enjoy the excitement at the starting line. I love the feeling of finishing, and knowing I have done well. I am pretty darn competitive and want to run faster both than past race times and the times of others around me that day. But I just haven't liked the experience of being out there on the course. I am easily derailed by faster runners, am discouraged when discomfort or fatigue hits, and find myself, too often, wrestling my reluctant mind into submission. And while I have never quit mid-run, the lure to do so has been strong in more than a few races.

Tomorrow is the day that all of that changes. As of this moment, I love racing. What's different? I have a plan. I have a goal time and tonight will carefully calculate my splits and will write them on my arm in sharpie if required. I know in my heart that there is no pain that my body can dish out tomorrow that it can't handle. I am certain that I am very strong and have much more in me than the world has yet witnessed. And I understand that—like hills and rain, and cold, and running—the only way I will love racing is to tell myself I do, put a big smile on my face, and leap into the thick of it.

So bring it, Brooklyn. Let's fall in love.

Solace in Snow

In Colorado still. I have adjusted to the time zones at night.  Staying up late. But mornings find me, clock set to the mountain time zone, awake at east-coast-mother-of-young-children times. Tired. Made fragile by responsibility and negotiating life. Nerve endings too close to the surface.

So today I again—predictably by now but still always surprising to me—found solace in my running shoes. My Colorado friends have grown tired of snow. But on May 1st, there was joy and peace on a snow covered and slushy trail, the branches white, my running shoes quickly filling with ice water, snow coming down heavy and soaking my hair, stinging my exposed skin as I moved. 

About a mile in I stopped, lifted my face to the sky and breathed for long moments, tears of relief mixing with the snow on my cheeks and making me whole. Running shows me my strength and hands me the courage to trust myself. In its moment, there has never been anything more perfect.

Can I Afford the Effort Required to Run at 5,430 Feet Above Sea Level?

This morning I ran four miles through the trails leading out of the town of Boulder, Colorado. I don't wear a watch very often when I run these days. After four years of running and racing I have a good sense how my effort at any given moment translates into a minutes-per-mile-pace. In Colorado, however, I estimate my speed by knowing how fast I would be running, given my effort, in my sea level streets of Brooklyn and then I add a full minute per mile.

I am in Boulder this week for my organization's bi-annual conference. For days I have very little time to myself and the time I do have is spent honing and practicing my talking points, finding typos in the program that I should have found BEFORE it went to print, and trying desperately to get enough sleep to make it through the long days. Most of the time while here I am the host at my own party. A bookish loner from birth, it is not a role that comes naturally to me.

Many people here know that I run. They are supportive. They also joke fondly. They ask me if I ran this morning. They ask me how far I ran this morning. They ask me what time I had to get up to get in a run.  And for a moment I think, "Wow, maybe I should have slept in instead."

It often takes a lot of effort to get out of bed and run. This is especially true when I know a very full day lies ahead and the night before involved dinner and a glass or two of Cabernet. And here in Colorado, 5,430 above sea level, with air at a premium, where I get breathless just going up a flight of stairs, with a large room full of people counting on me, can I afford the effort required to run?

Then I remember who I am. And I know that my running allows me to bravely face my days. It allows me to come through for others and for myself.

So today I awoke at 5:30am, slipped on my running clothes and shoes, pressed the down button of the elevator, and stepped out of the hotel lobby into the cool morning air. And two hours later—remembering my breath floating gently outside of my swiftly moving body—I smiled and welcomed eighty gathered colleagues.

Mustering Bravery After Boston

I'm in DC, where I have been since the very early morning train brought me here yesterday for two days of meetings and events.

I passed through Penn Station. I rode Amtrak. I met in Federal buildings. I ate in public restaurants. I took a long, fast run. I slept in a hotel and am now sitting in the same hotel's lobby answering emails and finalizing conference planning until my next event. The next event—the last before I head back to New York City and my sleeping family—is an exclusive reception and dinner with non-profit, government, and business leaders. 

I lived through 9/11. And two days ago, the finish line of world's most prestigious running event—an event I participated in three years ago—was bombed, tearing apart people and lives. Today, between meetings, I'm catching snippets of news about poison in letters addressed to our nation's leaders. I'm hearing about pressure cooker lids. And a dead child.

My own phone has been ringing unchecked for three days, calls and texts and emails from worried family and friends, uncertain whether or not I ran Boston. Because of the clock at the finish line I know with some certainty—as much as I can know about my finish time in any 26.2 mile run—that if I had run my pace would have put me there, just through the finish line, medal and mylar blanket in place, heading to baggage. 

I consider myself a resilient person. This week just getting on the southbound 4:40am train the morning after took courage. Not having been in Boston, last night's hard run along the Potomac felt strong. 

Two days later, however, I don't want to drink wine with important people in our nation's capital. I want to pull the quilts over my head. And I am reeling at just how very fucked up a very few people in this world are.

I know I will run marathons again including Boston. I know I will continue, for the foreseeable future, to live in a very large east coast city.  And in a little while I will don my heels and my small black dress and hop in a cab.

But in this moment this day requires more bravery than I feel able to muster.

The Day I Ran Boston and Discovered that Racing is Not the Same as Running Fast

Today is the 117th running of the Boston Marathon. In addition to wishing fleet feet to my friends running today's race, my thoughts turn back to Monday, April 19, 2010, the day I ran Boston.  

I had a blissful first marathon in Portland, Maine in October, 2009. The day I ran Portland, I had called myself a runner for less than a year, had trained well, and was amazingly blissful for the entire 26.2 miles, finishing strong and happy and about 20 minutes faster than my fantasy goal time. I was hooked.  

During the car ride from Maine back to Brooklyn, it suddenly dawned on me that I might just have qualified to run the Boston Marathon. A quick internet search revealed that, as a 45 year old woman, I needed a 4:00 marathon to qualify. My finishing time was 3:38.

The months leading up to the spring 2010 Boston Marathon were full of excitement, speed training, overuse injuries, physical therapy, and indecision. In the end, I decided to run the historic race, a decision that to this day I am so glad I made.

Today I find myself remembering back to that April morning. I boarded the hotel shuttle, leaving my family and friends behind at the hotel. Excitement on the shuttle and at the race start was palpable. We had all made it to Boston!

After that the story is probably pretty typical for novice racers. The sunshine and the excitement and my own desire to have an even better race than Portland took me out too fast. Several times along the course I questioned why I was there and contemplated what it would be like to just stop and lie down on the grass in the sunshine. But finish I did, aided by encouraging hugs from my family at Mile 20 and Miriam Makeba's Pata Pata on my quickly assembled ipod just before the final stretch. With all that struggle, I still pulled off a 3:40 finish, a time that should have made me happy indeed.

However, for months after Boston I experienced a desire to stop mid-race in nearly every race I ran. Sometimes I did stop, for just a moment, to give myself the pep talk I needed to finish. With lots of work and lots of talkings-to, the intensity and frequency of that particular race issue subsided. But it has never entirely vanished. Sometimes, mid-race, I just want to stop running.

I have spoken with lots of running friends about this, read books, and have received great advice. A triathlete friend from my college days suggested I focus on the pain and ask myself that, if this was how I felt all of the time, could I do it? My coach at the time of my Boston run told me that a marathon is a difficult distance and that anytime I finish one, I should feel proud and grateful. My team's new coach recently told me to consider, when the running gets tough, each part of my body. To examine why it is suddenly difficult and to make the decision about whether or not it is really too difficult to continue.

I have also invented a couple of my own mental imaging exercises. If voices start telling me to stop, I ask myself how I want to finish this. How I want to see myself and how I want to be seen in the world. I also remind myself that I can endure pretty much anything for the seven or so minutes that I probably have left in the race.

When I really consider my body as it races hard, I realize it is not my body that wants to stop. Sure my legs are working, my breathing is labored, my heart is exerting more than normal. But is any of this so painful that I genuinely need to stop?  Or can my calm assessment of my body serve to reassure my taxed body parts that they can get through it?

I needed to achieve a certain level of fitness to even be having this conversation. But once there, running and racing, at least for me, is 95% mental. And for me, this almost never comes into the picture when I'm training, only when I'm racing and heap on myself the added pressure of wanting to do well, finish strong, and place in the top of my age group.


Someday I will run Boston again. I have qualified with every other marathon I have run, but I have chosen not to run Boston until I have matured as a racer because I want the next time to find the kind of bliss I felt in Portland. Or at least, if I don't find bliss, to have perspective and to be grateful to have run it well.

Of Lightning and Jellyfish

While sitting by my six-year old daughter's bed last night as she drifted into sleep, questions continued. Wanting sleep to arrive, I gently told her to ask me one more question. Genevieve's final question to her mommy on the lovely spring evening was this:  "Why did god make the world so complicated, with lightning and jellyfish and everything?"

When she awoke this morning, I followed the advice of my dear friend Lou Harry and had a lovely conversation with my sleepy-eyed, pajama-clad daughter. I paraphrased Lou wildly, but am including in this post his words in their entirety because they are beautiful and because I want to remember them and because they made me pause and consider the glorious complexity of our world and my place of wonder in it.  

Lou said, "You want to know a secret, sweetie? All your life you are going to meet people who think they know who or what god is. And you know what? Maybe one or two of them might be right. But we don't know which ones and they don't know either. So here is what we are going to do. We're going to look at lightning and say 'wow' and we're going to look at jellyfish and we're going to say 'wow' and we're going to be thankful that we live in a world that is never ever ever going to get totally boring because there's always new stuff to learn about lightning and jellyfish and car motors and Velcro and bumble bees and tomatoes and daffodils and parakeets and people.  And maybe the more we know and the more we feel the closer we get to whatever god is. And that was the most awesome question I heard all day...maybe even all year."

Yesterday morning I visited the Isamu Noguchi Museum with Genevieve's first grade class and was reminded anew of all that Noguchi has taught me throughout my life. Noguchi shaped my vision of what it is to live in the world as an artist. I understand because of him that the medium—stone, words, clay, paint, musical notes, bodies in motion, voices raised—is just the stuff you move around to achieve your vision. The medium has its own properties and "free will," just as the artist has hers, and art is the give-and-take-dance between the two.

This post is not about god. I, in no way, feel qualified to write on that subject. But it is about approaching life with wonder, embracing complexity, and being wide-eyed and naive and never ever bored. No matter what I undertake, as it unfolds the vastness of what I still have to learn becomes quickly apparent. It is that way with child welfare and adoption after 20 years in the field. It is that way with pottery and drawing and theatre and fiction and public policy and parenting and friendship and love and on and on. And, four years later, it remains acutely so with running.

On my gentle four mile run today I thought about Genevieve's question and about the newness with which both she and I view the world. And I thought about Isamu Noguchi, chisel in hand before his glorious basalt structures. I have been running seriously for four years. It began with two mile runs three times each week and it grew. By this time four years ago I had completed my first 10K race and was contemplating a fall marathon. Five marathons, several half marathons, and many other distances later, I still consider myself a beginner with so much to learn. And I still find unbelievable joy each time my running shoe-clad foot hits the pavement.

As I develop as a runner, my teachers are my running friends and teammates, but especially, because of what  Noguchi taught me, my teachers are my own body, the air passing through my lungs, and the ground beneath my feet. I will now add to my list of teachers the lightning and the jellyfish.

Home is Where I Want to Be

Throughout my life I have searched for home--that elusive place of ease in my soul where all seems right with the world. While on an eight-mile run along the Androscoggin River in Brunswick, Maine Sunday morning, I affirmed an earlier realization that, for me, running just may be that home.

My life is rich, peopled by wonderful friends and dear family and marked by the fortune of deep love. I have followed a career path that is rewarding and adds value to society. But by nature I am reticent, which often strands me outside looking in, ever searching for a way to connect--and feel connected--more profoundly.

Moving along the running trail I perfectly inhabit my body, limbs synchronized, breath rising and falling easily within and without, air sweeping across my face, my thoughts drifting freely and brightly and gently in my mind, judgement gone (we will get to the difference between RUNNING and RACING for me in a later post!). Even on those days when the run comes hard, I can understand, forgive, and run on. I know my running self.

Like any love affair, there are problems with falling deeply in love with running. There is injury, of course. And even the anticipation of injury is ever-present, worrying that a forced separation will leave an accompanying void in my life. There are days with too little time. And days when I'm too stubbornly unhappy to get myself out the door to happiness.

But then there are the up-sides of this particular lover. Together we move in the world and see the world and its people in new ways.  Inside of running I am a gentle witness to the strength and weaknesses of my own mind and body. I can take running with me wherever I go. My size 10 Sauconys fit even my smallest overnight carry-on. If there is no nearby trail, I am sure to find a hotel treadmill waiting for me.  It takes me five minutes from pajamas to fully clad and ready to head out the door. And it is a certainty that just thirty minutes later I will be a happier and saner version of myself, more able to follow through on all of the demands of life.

Running has taught me so much, not the least of which is perspective.  To quote David Byrne from his beautiful love song, Naive Melody, that has served me as a touchstone for decades, "Home is where I want to be but I guess I am already there."

The Slump Days of Winter

I'm in a running slump right now.  Running makes me very very happy.  And so why am I sitting here in my desk chair writing instead of lacing up?

As March drags on, refusing to let go of winter, I sit.  I love running in cold weather.  But months of winter coats and boots.  Months of high oil bills and dry skin and never being quite warm and nursing a parade of winter illnesses.  And buried in unfinished paperwork and projects from life and job. So much to do that finding the real starting place requires the kind of focus that eludes me right now.  So I pick away at the small pieces, checking off items on my to-do list and stuffing the larger vision--and the joy that brings--to the back of my mind.

There is a nagging pain in my hip, confirming yet again that I need to strengthen my hip flexors. I refuse to believe that is true. I run marathons--how could anything about my legs be weak?! Or do I believe it, but am unwilling to do what is necessary to strengthen it?  Fear of success? Fear that I just might get faster and win some races if I actually worked on it instead of relying on my modest talent for running faster than the average person?  Laziness?

Friends and colleagues know I am a distance runner. They also know that I am the CEO of a national non-profit organization, have two young children and another just finishing college and heading to graduate school, travel frequently for my job, am married to a man who also has a demanding career, and have a big house in Brooklyn that requires a lot of attention. They find it hard to believe that I am lazy. And after I say it, I feel pretty foolish myself.  Like whining about my problems of privilege when there are real problems in the world.

Why begin this chronicle?  Four years ago I began running as an antidote to the mommy-career slump in which I found myself. Very real changes in my body and mind followed as I discovered:  1) I had something of a talent; 2) it quickly transformed from exercise to my sanity as the miles melted away worries, generated ideas, and put my mind in a far easier place; 3) through my words, I inspired others to start running or just view their lives and choices differently.  All of that felt great. 

So these words are for me.  If they resonate, they are for you too.  No matter where I am in life or what I have accomplished, making the next leap to the next level of success doesn't get easier. Publicly stating my running goals four years ago helped me to stick to them. Writing now will move me to the next plateau or mountaintop.  And if I write in such a way that you can see a bit of yourself and are inspired to envision more, I'm truly honored.