What I wish I had known

Look what arrived today!

5 whole days early!!!

It's like Chrismukkah in...May?!

So excited to break this little gem out of its box and take it for a run on Saturday.  Actually, it's kind of ridiculous how excited I am to do that.  Kind of similar to how excited I was to take these bad boys out for the first time on Tuesday:

Can you see them?  Are you sure??

If this wasn't all for the benefit of running, you'd think I'd turned into some sort of materialistic American or something.

But the way I look at it, my excitement about these things is way more telling of an entirely different transformation of myself: I have wholly and completely become an endurance athlete (I know, I probably could have said that 3 marathons and a half-dozen half marathons ago, but my mind can be a little slow to catch up and acknowledge things sometimes).

There are other indicators that endurance training has become an ingrained part of my life.  For instance, I have uttered the following sentences on more than one isolated occasion:

"I only have to run 11 miles this weekend."

and,

"Ice baths really aren't that bad!"

and,

"Yep, there's a spot where I should have put some BodyGlide."

The following thoughts have also begun occurring far too frequently:

I'm out of bananas! [panic] Time for an emergency trip to the grocery store.

and

I'm not ravenously hungry right now.  That's weird...

When new runners discuss with me the difficultly of finding the time to run, I have to pick my way back through the maze in my brain to a place where "finding the time to run" was a thought that occurred to me.  Because now, it seems as though my life has flipped upon itself.  Running is what I do.  It's everything else that I have to find time for.

Granted, my biggest life commitments right now are my job and my dog.  I'd imagine that in the future it could be much more difficult to make running #1, but that's a discussion for another day.

When I run my 5th marathon in 3 weeks, it will be the anniversary of my first marathon 3 short years ago and my first half marathon 4 years ago.  I can't say that my endurance running career has been very long or very accomplished, but in these years, I certainly have learned a lot about both myself and running.  The list of things that I've learned since embarking on this endurance trail would be endless, so instead of making another list today, I am go to impart upon you the one piece of advice I wish I had known from day one.  I'd like to think that this piece of advice could be made universally relevant to areas of life other than running, but it's up to you to transfer the knowledge.

Get ready for a mind-blowing tidbit of information here.

Tessa's Biggest Piece of Running Advice

Everybody has days where they just don't want to run.

Everybody.

I've done a lot of highly official research on this.  I read a lot of running blogs and running articles, and I talk to a lot of runners of all varieties.  And if there is one theme that holds true amongst them all, it's that we all have days where getting yourself out the door just seems awful.

I don't mean for this advice to be discouraging.  In fact, I think it's the opposite.  I remember being baffled by this realization during my first marathon training season, as I started having my first ever conversations with seasoned, experienced runners.  Up until then, I guess I had thought that one day I would just get to this point where running felt great and easy every single day.  Even though it didn't happen every day, I felt that each time I got home from work dreading the idea of heading out to pound the pavement again, it somehow meant that I wasn't a "real" runner.  I thought "real" runners loved to run.  All the time.

Not so.  Don’t believe a word of it.

All runners, regardless of speed or distance, experience the same highs and lows of daily life.  Some days you feel great.  And some days you don't.  Thus is life.  Who would want all the days to be great anyways?  As my absolute favorite author puts it in his new book, which I'm currently reading:

"Are you one of those people," she asked,"who think everything is beautiful?"

"No. That would mean nothing is beautiful..."

                               ~Mark Helprin, In Sunlight and in Shadow

If every run were great, then none of them would be great.  You've got to have the rough days to feel the good ones.

But here's the difference between the runner I am now, and the runner I was 4 years ago.  I, of course, often have days when I don't want to run.  But how I react to that desire to forgo the effort is different now.  Nine times out of ten, on those days when I don't want to run, I still do.  And the only time I am disappointed is that one time when I decide to succumb to the "no running today" thoughts.  When I give in.

It took a long time to train my mind and my body to put on the running shoes and kick myself out the door when my mind just wasn't feeling it.  And it was only after repeated days of deciding not to run, and then realizing that I felt even worse than I did before because I didn't get out there, that I learned how to be an endurance athlete.

Running hard and running far and running long is about running when you don't want to.  It's about running when it hurts.  Or when it sucks.  But regardless, you are still running.  Because there's an amazing thing that happens when you push past the "this sucks", "this hurts," and "I don't want to be doing this" thoughts.  There comes a point where all of a sudden, it feels right.  Again, maybe not good (not all the time), but right.  It clicks and you realize that at this moment, at this time, there is nothing that feels more right than the spinning of your feet, the rhythm of your breathing, and the jostle of your bones.

And to be honest, some of the best runs I've ever had are runs that happened on days when I just didn't want to go out there and do it.  But I did.  And it was the best remedy for whatever had been ailing me.

But also, as a little reminder: don't let all this talk about not wanting to run discourage you either.  Because most days, I want to run.  Most days, it is all I want to do to make my day complete.  I just want to acknowledge that there are some days when running is at the bottom of the list of things I'd like to do.

And that's ok.

In fact it's great.

Because those are the days that I feel the strongest.