see what comes

The more time I spend in the woods, the more clear it becomes that there is nothing humans have invented that wasn’t, in its essence and purpose, here before us.

Your data is my noise
Your wrong note is my inspiration
Your “been there, done that” is my new adventure
Can we grow a garden together if my cherished seedling
is your weed?

When I began running, in July 2007, I would RUN!!! until I tired myself out. Then I’d stop, panting hard and grinning from ear to ear. Once I’d recovered enough, I’d walk. And then I’d run some more and walk some more until I met Larry heading back through the park on his run. We’d run together then at a steady pace, with me trying hard to make it as far as a mile and with him checking his watch and recording splits. Back on the city streets, he took all the corners at a sharp angle, and he ended his run and stopped his watch at the same precise crack on the sidewalk every time, following the precise route he’d measured on gmap-pedometer.

Larry has had a fantastic year of running and racing. He’s had a PR at every distance he’s raced, including an 11-minute PR in the marathon (3:41:50) and just two days ago a 1-minute PR in a 5K (20:52). He’s made training plans and followed them — with fluctuations, give-and-take as necessary. After every run, he records the type of run or workout, distance run, overall pace, pace for each mile or interval, weather conditions, which pair of shoes he wore so he knows when he’s put 500 miles on them and should buy a new pair, mileage for the week, the month, the year….

For the past few weeks I’ve run maybe three or four times during the week — about 15 minutes out, then turn around and run back. I don’t know how many miles or even how many days I ran last week. I don’t know the pace. I do know I’ve mostly had a little sense of heaviness during my runs. I’ve trusted it will go away. I know that just a few days ago I commented to Larry that I’ve been reincarnated as a jogger. I’ve watched the “shoulds” come and go, and the urge to go faster or to stop come and go. I’ve felt myself speed up when I come into the light or crest a small hill. I’ve noticed how my stride shortens now when I go up hill and how I still seem to have trouble finding a comfortable stride going down steep hills. I’ve timed a few half miles and found that I’m annoyed by knowing the times. I also know I’m loving the feel of running in my cheap, worn, lightweight shoes, tied so loosely that I slip them on and off instead of tying and untying them. And I know that I’ve been wearing the high-tech fluorescent yellow-green shirt with the zip collar and the sleeves with the thumb holes, so I’m visible in the early dawn and warm enough if the temperature dipped overnight.

This morning I leave the house and RUN down the hill and it feels wonderful. I run up the next hill, too, more slowly, and onto the bike path where I pick up my pace again. Then I walk some and run some. I think, I analyze, I work up a sweat in the mild, damp air. I keep going on the dirt trail at the end of the paved path and notice how when the surroundings are close it feels like you’re running fast, and I remember when we ran without lights through a pitch-black .75-mile tunnel recently and it felt like running in place. I remember, Oh yeah! all the trails around — why have I been sticking to the one paved path? And I look forward to exploring the trails during upcoming runs. When my watch reads 15 or 16 minutes, I turn around. I note that lately it feels so blah at that point on my runs, during the stretch after I turn around. I run some, I walk some. I run fast, almost kicking my butt as I go, and am glad to feel loose and free and light enough to run that way. I remember running with the neighborhood kids when I was 6 or 7, when kicking your butt was running “like a girl.” But, I recall, the man who won the Frank Lloyd Wright 5K on Sunday was almost kicking his butt.

And I walk some, and I run some more medium-fast. I remember how, as kids, when the bell rang at the end of the school day and we were released from the overheated school building to the playground, how we RAN! And how some days 10 or 15 years ago when I was working as an editorial assistant in an office, I’d head out the door for my walk home, and as soon as I got out, I’d start running. I run. I fret about whether I should maintain a steady pace. I fret about whether to pass the runner who passed me while I was walking. Would it psych her out? Would she think I was being competitive? Was I being competitive? I run fast and start to walk again before I catch up to her and then hope that didn’t weird her out. I think, I analyze, I sweat. I run fast-ish, I walk, I run again. The other runner turns and heads back toward me and we give each other a big smile.

I run. I think about Larry doing his 5.4-mile route through the park and look for him as I pass the turnoff. Another runner, a regular, goes by the other way and we exchange friendly smiles and a big hello. I enjoy the beauty of form as I run across an open bridge above the traffic below. I jog along, looking to see if Larry’s coming along the path yet. I head for home and, as I get near, I see Larry in his orange jacket arriving from the other direction.

A couple weeks ago Run With Mu posted his race schedule for the rest of the year, including a 50-mile trail run and a 24-hour race. The races I’m training for now fall at the opposite end of the distance running spectrum: a 5K and, a week later, a 1-mile time trial on an outdoor track with our son pacing my husband and me. With the 5K less than four weeks away, I can feel the weight of it starting to drag on me. Run With Mu said it first: “My relationship to running and racing is complicated, because I’m a neurotic mess.”

Mostly I race because racing and, even more significantly, training for a race has a lot to teach me. After four years of running I enjoy going fast, slow, long, hard, easy, mixing it up; doing hills, working out on the track, hitting the dirt trails along the river; going out in the heat or rain or snow. But call it a plan and gear it toward “peak performance” in a race and that’s another story. I’ve been in maybe eight 5K races since I started running four years ago. Sometimes I’ve run the race alone, sometimes with a faster runner pacing me, or accompanying a slower runner, or at tempo pace instead of race pace. Mostly I haven’t had a training plan. And the couple times I did have one I didn’t complete it, because of an injury, or because of a change in schedule that made it impossible to fit in, or maybe just because I’m a neurotic mess.

As I move into the last weeks of training for these two races, I find myself doing more thinking as I run instead of simply running. Analyzing. Judging. Trying harder and harder. And then dragging under the weight of it all. My mind is often off somewhere else — off wondering if I’ll be to sustain the pace for another mile, busy proposing I simply abandon the effort, judging me for doing yet another interval workout that looks nothing like it did on paper, worrying about how I’ll do come race day, or simply urging me on from 10 yards ahead. But if I notice my thoughts have wandered, and I gently return to this step, then in that moment I see that it is perfect. This step, in this run, on this day, in this life, in this world. This step leading to this step, and to this one, and to this one, and to this one. Simple and beautiful and true and whole.

So here are my goals:

• Hank Aaron 5K (current 5K PR is 23:32): (1) PR or (2) sub 7:30 mile pace or (3) sub 23:00 overall.
• 1-mile time trial (only previous 1-mile time is 6:54 on 6/8/11): (1) PR or (2) 6:30. Yikes.

And here is my goal:

• To keep returning to this step, as I train and as I race, with kindness and love, knowing that the results will take care of themselves.