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.