Finding Joy

On Sunday morning I took a walk with my family on a trail beside the San Francisco Bay. We had arrived the night before after a tiring journey from Brooklyn. As my kids climbed trees and played along the trail, I had the opportunity to observe the runners.

My take-away from those moments of observation was that there was a disturbing lack of joy in that small sample of the running community. In fact, only a young boy, probably ten or eleven years old, looked comfortable and happy as his running self.

I used to hate running and I'm sure that hatred was obvious. Somehow five years ago a switch flipped and I figured out that: 1) I had to love it if I wanted to stick to it; and 2) my mind was capable of convincing my body that I did love it. I am really not entirely clear how all of that transpired. It just was the right time for me to figure it out. Then, about four years ago I started running on occasion with teams, my own and another team closer to my home. What I was most struck by was the boundless energy and genuine joy of these runners. I remember likening them to puppies in my mind. I was in awe of their love of every stride.

Now, because of the example of others and my own mind over matter experience, as I run I am easy and ageless and full of bliss. I have tough runs aplenty, but joy abounds.

And so why the lack of joy in a glorious San Francisco winter day? The sun was out. The air was warm. The bay sparkled. They had no east coast snow. Their bodies could move and breathe, not confined to offices and desk chairs for the next 18 hours.

Here you can substitute yoga or golf or tennis or cycling or (fill in the blank) for running as it best suits you. And you can argue with me but I'm pretty stubborn about this:  I don't think there is anything different about the bodies or abilities of those who find a joyful home in running and those who don't. If your knees and your heart and your other more vulnerable body parts are forgiving enough to allow you to put on the miles in the first place, then I truly believe the rest is all in your mind. And if you want to love running, all you have to do is tell yourself you do and then love it you will.

So go love it. Or find what you do love. Running is good for you only if you can make it a lifetime habit. And if you don't love it, not only will you not run consistently, but where is the fun in that?

Remembering to Breathe

This morning I helped my son finish his math homework while supplying adverbs and exclamations for my daughter's Mad Libs and simultaneously packing lunch, making coffee, and trying to stuff enough breakfast into them to carry them through their busy school morning.

Last night I arrived home late after two days of work in Baltimore to ice and snow everywhere, the news that my sometimes mean cat had scratched the heroic woman who cleans my house twice a month, and an enormous meltdown and then tears and a big conversation with my son who hadn't done his math homework, wanted to play Minecraft with his friends, and is feeling the pressure of a big school project, the upcoming 4th grade musical, and a friendship that has taken a wrong turn. 

My children are nine and seven. And it wasn't until two years ago that I realized that somewhere in their early childhood years I had forgotten how to breathe. 

So with homework finished we were running late and we all dashed upstairs to dress and brush our teeth. I chose to dress in my running gear. All the paper on my desk from two days away was calling to me. But I nodded to it and acknowledged that 40 pre-8am minutes would be better spent in a run than slogging through email. That the 40 minutes I "lost" during my run would be made up, and then some, in efficiency later on.

This morning, and the choice I made in a hectic moment, reminded me of all of the perfect moments in life that I would miss if I didn't run. Prospect Park was quiet. The air crisp and cold but my body warmed quickly with the exertion. The brilliant morning sunlight sparkled on the snow-covered lake and the rolling hills of the Park's meadows. Hundreds of footprints made winter patterns. The few fellow runners out nodded and exchanged smiles. Sweatered dogs everywhere, pulling their owners across snowbanks. The Park's grand trees, snow on their branches, towering over and witnessing it all. Sounds muffled by winter. No music. And my breath, steady and even in the quiet. 

For the 10th Time, Put on Your Pajamas, Brush Your Teeth, and Go to Bed

When I am running, no one asks me to help with math homework or matching contractions with their meaning. No one needs me to put on their boots or zip their coats. Or find lost mittens or hats or socks or books. There are no buttons to reattach. No hunger overtaking normally sweet children, turning them into demons. Not everyone is talking at the same time. No 18 reminders to brush teeth and pee before heading to the school bus. Zero whining. There is no legal table to create for the still-unfinished confidentiality manual. No meetings to plan. No ever-at-the-ready cell phone alerting me to a new text/call/email/message/like. Hundreds of actionable emails fade, leaving room for the higher level vision of life and work that is too often pushed aside. 

It is nice that running is good for my body. That is not why I run. I don't run away from the daily demands (although I admit to wanting to run while screaming nearly every day). But I run in addition to the daily demands. To give myself the serenity of time without anyone needing anything from me. An hour without a single demand except the ones that I place on my own body and mind. An hour with only my breath and legs and strongly beating heart.

There is Mundane. And There is Running.

I was in California much of last week for work and so I spent this weekend unearthing the house from my absence. Saturday was mostly laundry. Load after load of it. Sunday was a grueling few hours of opening piled up mail, bill paying, health insurance claiming, and various other paper-based forms of torture. All of this was interspersed with feeding, cleaning up the kitchen, and the periodic entertaining of my children. My daughter's pleasure was sewing and needlepoint and I was frequently asked to thread a needle or tie a knot. With my son these days my primary role is making sure he does something other than play Minecraft. 

I always feel better when long-delayed tasks are no longer hanging over me. But in the moment I feel: 1) annoyance that my life is submerged in the mundane; 2) anger at myself for not doing it sooner; and 3) a nagging desire to stop mid-stream and find something fun and/or meaningful to do.

With the cold and the darkening Sunday sky it took a lot of my own willpower and urging from my husband to pull on my running shoes and head out the door. The thought of a run felt simultaneously hugely unpleasant and like a gift that my procrastinating self did not deserve. I had run 7.5 miles on Saturday with an errand to get my daughter's sewing supplies built into the last two miles of it. Sunday's reluctant 2.5 miles was just enough to shake loose my house-tired body and free my spirit.

Heading into Monday lighter.

In Case You Mistook Me for a Barbie

I finished yesterday's post feeling a bit like a sunshiny Pollyanna. A Malibu Barbie with every duck lined up neatly in a row. Today I am writing to set the record straight.

While I know I am very fortunate in many ways and have enough perspective to laugh at myself when I whine, I have plenty of whiny days.

I feel too in demand by my kids most days. And parenting is tough and some of the time I, frankly, don't think I'm very good at it. I am incapable of keeping on top of the clutter and the laundry. I have too much on my plate and that leads to a feeling of disorganization and overwhelm. Some days I can't see the forest for the trees and other days can't see the trees for the forest. I forget to be happy and in the moment far too often. I forget to rely on others. I don't often see my friends and miss them. I haven't seen a movie in the theatre (Disney doesn't count) in more years than I have fingers on one hand. I don't know what I want to be when I grow up. I still miss my mother, especially when I am sick or sad. I'm my toughest critic. There are not enough hours in my days to be a good partner and good mother and good CEO and good runner, forget reading fiction or swimming or playing or making pottery or drawing or dancing or traveling or happily sleeping late or practicing piano or listening to music or sitting quietly on the beach or or or.

But I run. And running takes me away and grounds me at the same time. It puts me squarely in the moment. Like few other moments in my life, it offers tangible opportunities to view improvement, success, and the results of hard work.

And so I run.

The Ordinariness Of It

I ran every day during the month of December just as I had the previous December. My 2012 streak was full of epiphanies and enormous changes in my strength, endurance, and focus. Although not entirely causal, a year of strong running followed, including two new personal records in half marathon and marathon distances, PRs that I had been chasing down without success for several years.

This December, as I embarked on my daily runs, I searched for the same kind of changes and realizations I had experienced last year. But no epiphany. Instead, it felt oddly ordinary.

I chose December as my month to streak because it is the anniversary of my start at distance running. I live in Brooklyn, New York. And while we have four seasons here, winters are comparatively mild without much snow accumulation and temperatures generally hovering around or just below freezing with some milder and some colder days. All the same, if I was going to generate excuses for not running, December sure could be the month to generate them. First is the weather. I prefer the cold to the heat and do love running in the gentle rain and snow, but it is not hard to tire of the extra discomforts and clothing requirements of winter runs. Combine the cold with my full-time job, special events for my two young children, winter illnesses, holiday preparations, and school vacation at the end of the month, and excuses not to run could take over.

But they didn't. Every day I pulled on running gear and took to the streets. I usually ran in the early morning after dropping kids off at the school bus. But one day the only time I could find to run was nearly midnight after a full day of work travel. To avoid injury, I kept each run relatively short, ranging between two and seven miles. My body was strong. I ran hard and fast. I experienced incredible joy and ease in each run. But that didn't feel like enough and I kept searching for more meaning.

Several people, runners and non-runners, following my streak called it impressive. Mid-month my reply to the impressive label was that I saw it differently:  that it was a self-indulgent gift to myself. Yesterday, a running buddy told me that my streak had inspired him to show up to a race starting line on a rainy January morning.

And it was in that moment that I fully realized that its very ordinariness was what made this past month most extraordinary. I am a 49 year old woman blessed with a strong and healthy body and a mind willing to disregard discomfort in order to live a life that is, to me, full of promise, joy, and ease. Some runs were more challenging than others, but I never regretted a run. Instead, each run delivered a heap of gratitude for being out of my desk chair, away from life's obligations for that moment and, especially, for being alive and moving through this beautiful world.

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.