12 Steps

Running is a delicate balance.

The act itself is a balance. Delicately striking the ground with one foot, pushing off on a toe while moving the other leg forward. Hanging suspended in fluid air weightless for one moment before succumbing to gravity, shifting your weight over the other foot, then pushing off to fly again. It requires strength to take off, and economy to execute the movement again and again. You need both components to be your best.

Training is also a balance. Train too hard continuously, and you will burn out or injure yourself. Just as the space between days, the act of sleeping, is necessary to recharge, space between hard workouts is necessary.

And finally, there is a great macro-balance to running and life. While running is a moving meditation, ultimately requiring individual focus, commitment, and soul-searching, the trail is not a monastery. While some are called to run for a higher purpose, most of us will spend our running lives in a private devotion to a personal cause which is often not related to running at all - spiritual enlightenment, personal achievement, a breath of fresh air, a break in the day, and friendships.

And as such it deserves an integration into our lives, rather than an absorption of our lives. Run for alone time, soul-searching, and personal challenge, but also run for fellowship and the rejuvenation that comes from sharing those challenges.

Perhaps this is why 12-step groups are so successful in accomplishing their goals. They have realized that soul searching cannot be done in a vacuum, that personal insight often comes from outside ourselves, and that our fellow competitors in life can buoy us to accomplishments we could not have reached through the power of faith alone, especially when that faith is tested. Just as Dick Beardsley used Alberto Salzar to reach his apex as a marathoner, achieving a feat no one thought possible of him based solely on his training alone, growth in any endeavor requires a balance of dedication to introspection and extroversion - a willingness to call up the unknown quantity from deep within yourself that you would not have seen if it wasn't for the mirror others have held up.

Sunday I met a group of friends for my final 20-mile run before my marathon. As a final confidence booster, I wanted this run to go well, and knew that the exhileration of running with a group would provide me a boost. And soften the blow if it didn't go so well.

I started at 6 AM from my house. When I woke up I could see the air lying in a down blanket over the ground. As I stepped out onto the trail, clouds lingered like a snowfall suspended over the glassy lake. A great blue heron appeared out of the gray. A ghostly figure approached me from the other end of the lake, a man walking his dog. Otherwise, I am alone.

I took the first 5 miles to the park alone, easing into my run, feeling the curtain of mist parting around me. I ran out on the road for a mile, then dropped into a trail running along a secret creek on the side of the road. The foliage was as thick as the air, and though I was only steps from a major road I was in another world. This was my alone time. I was centering myself for the remaining 15 miles.

I took a turn onto the road leading into the park where I would meet my friends. I ran a half mile down the road to the trail and picked it up heading towards the parking lot. In another quarter mile, my husband and friend came running toward me and we all lit up.

I turned and headed with them for a few minutes. They were running just a hair faster than I wanted to, so I stayed with them for 10 minutes and took a minute-long drink-break. When I started up again, they were still in sight, so I picked it up to catch them, splashing through the puddles as I came up on them. Running with friends reminded me how playful it could be.

On my next break, however, I dropped back, not willing to sacrifice an appropriate pace and damage my workout to stay with them. I knew I would probably catch my husband later on, so I anticipated running another few miles on my own. But within a few hundred yards, a man passed me and commented on how well stocked I was (this was not a lewd comment - just a reference to the four gels and 6 water bottles strapped around my waist). Several years ago I might have just laughed and let him go on his way. But I've realized what a resource other runners are on the trail, and when I spotted the VHTRC logo on the back of his shirt, I told him I was in the club as well.

He dropped back and ran with me the rest of the way around the lake, about 3.5 miles. I told him about my run with Vicki last week, and he told me about his upcoming ultra, the Catoctin 50K. I asked him if it was true that running a 50K was easier than running a marathon. We talked about our mutual experiences in the Marine Corps Marathon. We found a lot to talk about, and rather than feeling uncomfortable, as I might have in the past, it made the miles fly by.

On the next loop of the park my husband and friend came back to pick me up. DH was feeling a little like quitting, but realized we'd both tackle him if he did that, and decided to stick it out for one more loop, 5 miles, to bring his total run up to 10 miles, the longest run he's done since March.

This time, when I stopped for a drink break, DH hung back with me. The pace on the first loop with our friend had been too much for him and he was hurting now. We slogged it out through 4 more miles together. I was doing most of the supporting, encouraging him to ditch his hand-carried water-bottle for the sake of efficiency and sharing mine with him instead, counting out the minutes to our next break, strategizing about his upcoming 10K race.

When he felt he could go no further we made it a goal to go another half mile to the dam at the end of the lake, a mile from the parking lot. He made it, and as I trotted off away from him, he asked if he did good. I turned around and told him I was proud of him and I loved him. With encouragement he had pushed himself to accomplish something he didn't feel himself capable of, and ended feeling well prepared for his race and proud of himself.

As I reached the parking lot, our friend was waiting. I had one more lap to reach 20 miles, and I asked him if he was up for it. He said not a whole lap, but he'd run out 10 minutes with me then turn around and head back to the lot. We went a bit faster, and talked about his goals for his upcoming half-iron tri. I felt great at 15 miles - much better than I had at 15 miles on my previous 20 miler and 18 miler. I wasn't tracking my pace exactly as there aren't any mile markers on this course, but I had a split for each lap and if I was doing the math right, was holding a good 10:30 pace.

At 10 minutes, with 4 miles left to go on my run, my friend turned around and wished me well, leaving me to finish the run the way I'd started, and the way we ultimately all have to make it through life - alone. In another mile bad cramps came up on my and I pulled off into the woods for a bathroom break. But otherwise my legs were feeling good. After relieving myself I felt fresh and continued trotting down the trail. I was starting to feel the miles a bit, but enouraged myself to keep going. I made the dam a mile from the end, and started pushing myself through to the end. I exploded into the parking lot on a finishing kick and finished the lap only a minute slower than the previous lap, even with the bathroom break.

To my surprise, DH and our friend were sitting in camp chairs reclining with drinks and a couple of other women who had stopped me on the trail to ask about my Fuel Belt. We were making all kinds of new running friends out here today.

I settled back into the chair, downed some jelly beans and water and basked in the accomplishment of my run and of my friends. And I realized how much better shape I am in now than I was 4 years ago, when my husband left for the middle east. Not only can I finish 20 miles feeling strong and prepared for the marathon, I have a group of friends I can count on to get me through it, a position I was not in during those dark days in 2002.

Running has taken me to many places, allowing me to collect many souveniers along the way, but the journey I am most satisfied with is the journey on which I collected the friends who can help me see what I am really made of - the ones who pick me up and get me through that long long run, and give me the strength to keep going on my own.