Running and the Spiral of Life

I rounded the corner just before the mangrove at the edge of the sea, arms rhythmically swinging at my sides, legs nearly numb as my feet miraculously found their way beneath my wavering body.

Any sweat quickly evaporated in the late morning sun, leaving my skin awash in a grittiness and visible swirls of white. With each movement, my sports bra strap felt a little like sandpaper, 500 grit slowly grinding away a line in my skin at the side of my ribs as my breath rose and fell.

We had started optimistically before sunrise in a gloriously cool 73°F (23 C) in a lush green neighborhood. Since we left the treed streets to the open, dusty roads and the sun rose over the rugged mountains hours ago, the temperature had climbed to 81°F (27 C) and 74% humidity as we now ran by the edge of the sea.

By this point, as an Arabian winter was turning into an Arabian spring, my body gratefully seemed to be more local than those of the traveling runners I’d long passed, red-faced and overheated along the race route.

I sympathized with them and was also astonished by the adaptability of the human body as I continued, trodding along mostly alone. My brief cross country stint in high school kicked in as I focused on slowly picking off each runner in front of me.

From above I’m sure we looked like a race of banana slugs enticed by the scent of fermenting dough. (You didn’t race slugs as a kid? Well, you can imagine. It’s what the tail end of a marathon looks like — or feels like. We’re compelled forward by something, but oh so slowly.)

Sure, I couldn’t match the awe-inspiring woman who’d finished in half my time, all while fully cloaked in black and a runner’s hijab. I cheered her on when our paths crossed as she doubled back nearing the finish line and I continued on to the second half of the race.

But I was still running, a victory for a girl from the rainy Pacific Northwest where 65°F (18 C) means shorts and a spaghetti strap tank (and slug racing).

A victory for a woman competing a day before her 42nd birthday who periodically ran in fits and starts throughout her life, but who was no Runner.

A victory for a mother of three who wasn’t a slim, toned paragon of endurance, who just a week prior had her pooch showing through her evening gown poked by a woman half her age in jest about how much I had eaten at the wedding buffet.

It was a victory for this miraculous body I was gifted.

Up ahead I could see the tall, white buildings rising beyond the mangrove – the finish line. The throbbing beat of the Syrian Dabke pushing my body on was interrupted by my mileage tracker, “25 miles.”

It was go time.

I quickened my pace, legs moving on muscle memory alone. I must have looked like a camel racing: arms, legs, and lips flailing about, foam probably flying from my mouth. I focused on mechanics, arms swinging, each foot landing and rolling through. Anything I had left was put toward reaching the end.

A stranger on a Vespa road by and yelled out an encouraging, “You’re running strong!”

I was. And the Dabke beat drove me on.

Parenting as Distance Running

I remember this moment – finishing the only marathon I’ve ever run – as I reflect on my oldest child as she earns another year. She’s in high school now, nearly an adult.

Like most firsts, I had to figure out mothering as we went along. Parenting is the original building the plane while flying it (before Silicon Valley made this saying trend).

Looking back, it’s easy to see all the ways I faltered, when I finished late, to focus on the times when others appeared to be a better parent than I was, those who had more finesse, more training, or more experience.

It’s easy to see what I would do differently now.

It’s easy to hear the critics. There are always people in the wings thirstily waiting to see us stumble or fail.

It’s easy to blame those who came before who “should” have taught me better, coached me to perform better.

Just like running.

But in other ways, I can see all the times when I truly did my best (the best that anyone can technically do), the ways that I dug deep, when I rose to the challenge, and when I got creative and worked with what I had – not what I wished I had or was.

I can remember others who supported me, those who did their best, and the man on the Vespa near the end of the race. There are always people, strangers even, cheering us on, urging us to push through.

I feel gratitude when I allow myself grace.

Just like running.

“Life ain’t a track meet (no) it’s a marathon.”

– Ice Cube from “You Can Do It” (1999)

“Just like running…”

And then I remembered. I remember I had this very premonition early one morning while pregnant with my first nearly two decades ago.

The Spiral of Learning

I used to have a blog of mostly random thoughts and encounters I created to keep a link to friends and family when I traveled abroad and then moved to a different country. I haven’t read it for years.

I went back to the Blogger archives and, sure enough, I found a post I wrote a few weeks before I gave birth to my first.

And it’s about running.

Life is like this: it’s a spiral. We often return to similar themes and opportunities for healing from new perspectives and with hard-earned wisdom.

It can feel like we’re unmoving or stuck sometimes, when really we’ve made a whole wider revolution and are returning to a thread from a new angle, as a new person with new skills and perspectives. It’s an opportunity for a deeper understanding and growth.

Here’s that original post from twenty-something me before becoming a parent:

I decided to run cross country in high school as a way to get in shape for the basketball season. So, one beautifully sunny early September day, I laced up whatever athletic shoes I had and showed up for my first run longer than a mile.

It was a whole new kinesthetic experience. While my body, as most, instinctively knew how to limber from a walk to a trot without losing balance, it had no idea how to do this continuously for several miles on end. And how helpful would it have been to have a coach describe that process in painstaking detail? It’s something you just figure out.

Sure, a basketball game consists of running around for a good hour – but the rhythm is different. It’s a sprint, stop, jump, jog, pounce, slide. Not a run in the woods.

The most remarkable day was not that first day with that first run, but the next and the day after that. For some reason, I still showed up to practice to subject my body to what was fast becoming a torturous exercise.

My young, supple, 14-year-old legs ached and cramped. My lungs burned. And, yet, I continued. I continued at a ridiculously slow cadence – but I continued.

Using every morsel of strength I had, I trodded alongside seasoned girls who carried on lively conversations as they effortlessly bounded about. Others that had shown up for their first runs took days off and then stopped coming all together but, perhaps out of a lack of a better hobby, I didn’t. And my body got used to its daily routine.

Several weeks later, I had my first race. It was a short 2 miler based on the track of an old high school, my mom’s (since defunct) school.

I was given a uniform: a near see-though white jersey and shiny, spandex, purple, grandma-styled “spankies” that our ladies team wore instead of shorts. And I was put down on the track for the first heat.

Because of the lacking numbers on our team, I think I was the 7th runner on varsity. (The top 5 score, so I was second alternate. Not bad for a first – even if a default position.)

I instinctively did what I thought I should do: I wiggled up to the front of the huge mass of about 75 girls, assumed a semi-crouching position, awaited the gun and took off at full speed upon its firing.

A girl from Mount Pilchuck wearing burgundy was at my side. Sensing competition, I tried to speed around her. She kept my pace. We left the track, sprinting across a parking lot until reaching the soft ground as we headed for the suburban woods. I was at the front of the pack.

And there, on the bed of fallen pine needles, the message from my legs finally reached my brain, “What the hell are we doing?!”

And my lungs shortly followed, “You have got to be kidding me!”

I wanted to foul some girl on a layup and throw my hands above my head, breath in a full breath of air, run my sweaty hands over the pads of my shoes to ensure traction for the rebound of her free throw, and watch her take some penalty shots.

But we had just begun.

I quickly lost steam. Mount Pilchuck passed me, and then another girl, and another until I was alone in the woods. “What was I thinking, sprinting like that?!”

My legs faltered. I began to walk, my chest heaving for more air, my legs wriggly inside their pink skin.

Someone came over to jog with me and encourage me along. I picked up to a slow jog, more to avoid making my encourager feel bad than out of any interest in racing.

After an eternity, I rounded the last corner to head back on to the track. As I did, the announcer’s voice could be heard loud and clear: “Please clear the track for the final runner.”

The final runner.

Any embarrassment I felt was overcome by a resounding voice porting reason screaming, “You’re f-ing right I’m the last runner. You people are all insane!”

But, I was determined to never walk in a race again. And it was abundantly clear that I had to change my approach.

If given any situation, that’s generally how I proceed. I wriggle my way up to the front and run like hell. Even if it might be in the wrong direction, even if it might not be sustainable, I sprint.

Then, as I round the corner, a clearer assessment of reality is made. Impulsive doesn’t quite describe it. Perhaps impassioned, enthusiastic or driven? Whatever it’s called, it’s not the panacea my instinct seems to think it is. That’s the take-home.

Now, as I awake at my usual 4:30 or 5:00am to pee, eat a banana and ponder all that I’ve failed in my life while making a sorry attempt to return to sleep, I remember my experience of learning to find my own pace.

Yesterday at 5:15pm, I finished my last final exam of the semester on the date of my 37th week of pregnancy. My last of 5 exams in 7 days.

Today, I start to refocus the energy previously spent on polymers, gear ratios, and shock waves to the little life inside me who so patiently has waited. Sure, she would poke out a little foot on the left side every several hours to say, “Here I am! And I have a foot. Look!”

But now I feel like we finally have the time to hang out and prepare for a whole new stage of life together. And I know it’s not the sprinting kind of stage.

I know that my body will ache and my mind will struggle to make sense of this new experience. And, while I have legs and enough of a functioning sense of balance to be bipedal, I know I’ll have no idea how to run until I’m thrown out to my own devices.

And with that, my sense of reason is joining me again, and I’m feeling like heading back to bed…. Good night, Internets.

Pacing and the Spiral

Honestly, I’m still a bit of a sprinter in the beginning, but I’ve learned to channel this instinct into a light, easy warm up trot, knowing that there’s so much more coming down the road.

I’ll eventually leave the comfortable cool of the trees, and the pack will thin.

The sun will rise.

I will be challenged. And encouraged.

I’ll do the best that I can in the moment, while others pass me by, because the best is the most that we can do.

In the process, I might be rubbed raw, worn down physically and emotionally.

And I will heal (until one day I won’t).

Until that day, I will learn from it all, from the two mile race at 14, to the birth of each child, to the marathon and parenting, and to waking up each day to live as the person I hope to one day become.

Because we are all becoming.

You’re constantly in a process of growth. These coincidental moments that you circle back to in life are a reminder of where you’ve been and how far you’ve come. And it’s so much further than 26.2 miles.

Image credits, in order on Unsplash: Patrick Fobian, Annie Spratt, Michael Dziedzic, Robert Anasch, James Lee, and Vitaly Gariev. Thank you!