Just Keep…

You’d think that, after running a marathon on October 21st, running twenty miles on October 28th would be easy, right?

’S what I thought.

Wrong, my friends. So painfully wrong.

I thought I had recovered beautifully from my race, and when the following Saturday rolled around, I was eager to keep pushing myself. Long-distance running is addictive, you see. It’s kind of like getting a tattoo – or, at least, I imagine it’s sort of like that. I have not yet felt the desire to board the “Paint My Body” bus myself, but my plethora of pleasantly painted friends all report a little niggling voice that sounds remarkably akin to the refrain I hear when planning my mileage for the week: Just one more. Just one more. C’mon, you know you want to: just one more.

Furthermore, the “26.2” length is rather arbitrary. It’s not grounded in scientific research into the limits of the human body; on the contrary, the “history” (legend, really) of the marathon goes something like this:

~ 490 B.C.: The Greeks fight a battle against the Persians near a town called Marathon. After their victory, a plucky Greek chap named Pheidippides runs all the way to Athens – roughly 25 miles – to deliver news of the battle. He arrives in Athens, shouts the Greek equivalent of “We won!”, and promptly falls over dead. 

~ 1896 AD: The first modern Olympics include a race designed to honor the run of Pheidippides. The course stretches from Marathon to Athens and measures around 24.85 miles.

~ 1908 AD: The Olympics happen in London. The Olympic officials haven’t been too picky about setting an exact mileage for the marathon event. The folks in charge lay out a 26-mile course from Windsor Castle to the stadium, then add on an extra 385 yards so the race can finish right in front of the royal viewing box.

385 yards = 0.2 miles.

And, there you have it.

26 (ish) miles from one town to another in Greece, and 0.2 miles so you can yell “God save the Queen!” as you head towards the finish line. (Apparently, this is a thing. I may start doing it.)

I say all that to say: what is it about 26.2 miles that takes it out of one? I’ve been doing long runs every Saturday for the past couple months, and one week has always been enough recovery time. Hence, I set out to run 20 miles one week after my race, thinking I would take it easy, pace-wise, but that the distance itself would be a piece of cake. Yummy, decadent, chocolate peanut-butter cake. Kind of like the piece that was waiting for me in the kitchen, just right for a post-run afternoon tea.

I noticed immediately that I was tired. I gave myself grace, relaxing into the run and still maintaining pace. Muse was my friend once again (I defy anyone listening to “Supremacy” NOT to be inspired to pound some pavement), and I invited my old buddy Mumford (and his Sons, of course) along also. All was well until about mile 15 – I realized “tired” was no longer a sufficient adjective, and it was going to take some effort for me to continue. I continued, thinking I could get past the proverbial “wall” and cruise home the last few miles.

Then I hit mile 17. And mile 18. And mile 19.

I wasn’t getting past the “wall”; I seemed to be running alongside it. What’s more, it was starting to bear a cruel resemblance to China’s famous Great Wall.

Miles 17-20 on October 28th were a whole lot harder than any of the 26.2 miles on October 21st. I guess the marathon distance, however arbitrary and unfounded, is indeed a uniquely taxing experience for the human body. Or, maybe my particular human body was trying – oh, so sweetly – to remind me that it does need a bit of an extended break in the imminent future.

On the bright side, as I was painfully pounding along, I had this cheerful thought:

This is what Perseverance feels like.

Followed closely by:

I can totally blog about this.

It was the hardest and easiest thing in the world to keep putting one foot in front of the other. It was hard because I wanted to stop (obviously), but it was easy because that rhythmic motion – place foot down, bring foot up, repeat – was *literally* the only thing I could do. There was no other way to finish, and I needed to finish – because, as hard as it was, I knew that I was able to do so. Therefore, if I didn’t finish, I would be letting myself down. I would be breaking the promise I made to myself that had helped get me out of bed that morning. Worst of all, I would feel a little bad about eating the aforementioned chocolate peanut butter cake waiting for me in the kitchen.

That, my friends, is an untenable set of circumstances.

Writing is a lot like running.

They’re both solitary activities, and they can be lonely. Both go well with coffee beforehand, music throughout, and chocolate afterwards. Both produce inimitable sensations of deep fulfillment and effusive, empowering joy.

Both also contain seasons of the most boring and tedious labors you can imagine.

So, as I breathed through every painstaking minute of those final three miles, I thought:

Remember this, Nelson.

Note it.

Next time you’re staring at that empty screen with that blasted cursor blinking heartlessly away –

Next time you’re staring at that blasted group of words that flatly refuse to rearrange themselves into a more pleasing order, and you can’t blame anyone because it was you who produced that original less-than-pleasing order in the first place –

Next time you’re tempted to stop staring at all such blasted things and resign yourself to a life spent binge-watching The Great British Baking Show and eating cookie dough –

– just keep putting one foot in front of the other.

Mile 20 WILL come.

And then, you can eat cake.

My question to you today, my dear ones, is this:

What is YOUR mile 20?

Where in your life do you feel like you’ve hit mile 17, and you’re having a hard time remembering why you set the goal in the first place?

I am not a therapist or a life coach or a self-help expert. My advice to you is just another paraphrase of those immortal words from Dory:

“JUST KEEP SWIMMING.”

Just keep putting one foot in front of the other, friends.

And then, eat cake.

P.S. No poem this week; instead, I leave you with a quote from my dear friend Jack (more widely known as C.S. Lewis), writing at the tender age of 17 to his close comrade Arthur Greeves:

“It doesn’t matter what we write (at least this is my view) at our age, so long as we write continually as well as we can. I feel that every time I write a page either of prose or of verse, with real effort, even if it’s thrown into the fire next minute, I am so much further on.”

Just keep writing.

Just keep running.

Just keep…