Fear, blood and recess

Welcome to the inside of my head while I'm running. When you have two hours to do nothing but listen to the music, watch the world go by, wave to the friendly people and keep your body moving, there is a whole lot of time in there to think. If you aren't comfortable in your own skull, it's got to suck.

Today's run started with me thinking on the nature of fear and how endurance sports forces you past it. I'm going to let you all in on a not very well kept secret: You are tougher than you think you are, you can do more than you think you can. I'm not diminishing the amount of hard work that is required to progress an athlete from walking a 5k to running their first marathon but the toughest muscle to train is the one between your ears. By the time we are out of our teens risk avoidance creeps into our thinking. It makes sense in a way, we worked hard for our belongings, our station in life, our health and we want to at least keep what we have. As we all know, when you go at life strictly from a risk-avoidance view, progress is difficult. When you run more than a mile or so, your body starts to give off fairly serious alarms. It's trying to look out for your best interests by making your world very uncomfortable. Your nervous system is in constant overdrive trying to warn you away from this activity. Listening to fear is natural, normal, reasonable... and it holds a person back.

That was what I was going to write and what was in my head until the first mile. The river walk in Harrisburg is a bit ill maintained. The pavement is broken and heaved in many spots as you go south down the river and my foot snagged on one of them. I knew it before it happened...I was going down hard. I had at speed so I had several steps to decide the nature of the crash. I could drop off the edge into the river...the low and decidedly foul smelling river. I could try to get my rusty old body to take it on the shoulder and roll but that was a risky gambit at a run...or I could just put my hands out and hope for the best. I came up sore and missing a lot of skin on the palms of my hands. It started to throb and bleed in the messy manner that skin abrasions do bleed. I paused my Garmin (funny how that's my FIRST thing) and used my water to clean the bloody dirt off...which made it bleed MORE. I took a few steps and pain shot through my hip: No, this run is done.

Because you know...I've never bled before or fallen down. Standing there watching the blood drip down my hands I knew full well that this was a lie. When I was kid, play was a full contact sport. We were often forced to play "nice" at recess but even then, bumps, bruises and blood...lots of blood was just part of going out. At that age I was game enough to dust myself off, wash out the wound (often with saliva, yes little boys are beastly) and then...continue playing. Then I got to go home and face my mom asking why my clothes were ripped and bloody. Standing there I got a little angry with myself. I decided that this was really no excuse and if I was pompous enough to consider writing about how running is learning to deal with fear, discomfort and occasional pain, I could damned well practice what I preached. I think once we get to be "adults" we don't see enough of our own blood and just the mere sight of it makes us uncomfortable and alarmed. Go out and play! If you get a boo-boo, get someone to give it a kiss, put a bandaid on it and KEEP PLAYING!

I'd planned on going into comparing the spiritual aspects of my Sunday runs down by the river to the people heading off to church around me...but I've rambled on and that will have to wait for another post.