It’s a sliver of a moon, yes, but even with just a fractional piece of said celestial body, there’s at least still some light visible.
That’s what I try and tell myself as the darkness envelops the worldview.
There’s a weight to the weariness, a weight on the soul, and an all-too-literal weight on the body. I’m sluggish and funky, depressed at a time and place that is seemingly through Lewis Carrollian looking glass, where fact is fiction, lies are cheered, and the spiral down a rabbit hole seems to have no end in sight.
And that’s just the world outside. Inside, I’m a mess and a half. I’m still hurting from the Carolina Reaper shock to the system. Slow and meandering on the day, I’m even more achy breaky pained several days later.
I want to go for a run to try and shake out some of the creaks and cracks but while my mind and heart say “go, go, go!” my body keeps shouting, “no, no, no!” There’s a heat to my skin, a sense of clamminess, and my calves are still twitchy with tingly exhaustion and overwork. And yet, I try to motivate myself: there is after all my expanding beer belly, which is attributable to all *but* hops and barley. I’ve decided that after years of being told I’ll grow to like brews that are true, the reality is that beer as an acquired taste is just forcing yourself to the point of capitulation. And I’ve decided much like roller coasters that I’m done fooling myself: I just don’t like beer. I like a lot of other things, clearly, given my ballooning waistline, just not beer. So I need a different name for the belly. It’s not exactly a bowl full of jelly, either. Let’s call it the ever-expanding junk belly, as the calories that cause it are mostly junk.
In any case, I’m gearing up for a running tour of the easternly Pacific Northwest — Montana, Utah, and Idaho. I’m trying to tell myself that with that schedule abrewin’ (that brew I can get behind) that it’s okay to skip a few days of running, even if the bathroom scale sighs heavier and heavier minute by minute. But emotionally and psychologically this feels like a recipe for further regret, larger senses of shortcomings, and a debilitating depression brought on by a shroud of failure.
The other day I registered for runDisney’s 6th annual Dopey Challenge down at Walt Disney World. I’ve run the previous 5 and wanted to maintain my streak, despite the high cost both financially and physically on me.
On the other hand, I decided earlier this year that I was probably not going to go back to Boston for 2019, figuring I’ve been fortunate enough to have done it a few times and I should maybe let other people get the experience. That makes it sound like runner noblesse oblige which isn’t how I wanted it to sound but maybe what we want isn’t the same thing as what happens.
In any case, I was recently reminded by the Boston Athletic Association via email that the registration dates were fast approaching. The BAA also sent out a historical analysis of the qualifying times, a reminder that there’s the official qualifying times and then there’s the varying “cut-off” time which is the minimum time *below* the qualifying time that is needed due to the field size limitation of runners.
Occasionally at races this year (albeit in truth these days *rarely*) I have broken the 3 hours, 15 minute qualifying time for my age group. However, I do not have a “cushion” of 3:23 or more below that to ensure a place if I did decide to put my name in for the race. It is a humbling thing to realize this, especially given that last year I had a PR of 3:02:35, thus unquestionably guaranteeing an entry (barring of course a massive surge in sub-3 hour runners). In 2018, my best time is a 3:14:32 at Surf City, a 28 second cushion that historically just will not cut it. However, since September 17, 2017 (the start of the 2019 Boston Qualifying calendar), my best time comes courtesy of Zagreb, Croatia, with a 3:11:08, a time that *might* get me in… if Zagreb is recognized as a Boston Qualifier course. All this is “inside baseball”… or I should say “inside running”… and way more detail than is necessary. The point is, I’m not sure even if I did put in for the race that I would get a slot. It’s a reminder that I’m older, slower, and trending downward, which does not help my mood. Have I been telling myself I wasn’t going to run Boston in 2019 as a face-saving gesture? Because the reality seems I couldn’t run Boston even if I wanted to… Sigh.
I’ve previously written how I had hoped to return to my PR course this year and take another moonshot at the sub-3 time. That went… poorly. In the back of my head, I was hoping the races coming up next week might bring a cushion-worthy time for Boston… not to enter mind you, just to selfishly and egotistically know I could. I thought the Idaho Falls Marathon would be my best chance for success given its elevation chart:
But in prepping directions and packet-pickup times for this weekend, I re-read the fine print; it turns out this race will be ineligible:
I’m just feeling dumb and foolish. And I say this not to shift blame to others or make excuses. Twenty years ago I did a senior honors thesis movie that juxtaposed Shakespeare with the stalwart Saturday morning live-action teen sitcom “Saved by the Bell.” I distinctly remember at the premiere explaining that the shortcomings and failures of the film were mine and mine alone but anything that was good would be due to the tireless cast and crew, that any success of the piece was ours and ours collectively. In this instance, in this life at the moment, I’m feeling similarly. But lately I’ve been feeling like the shortcomings and failures have been far outnumbering the successes.
I’m trying to gaze at that sliver of the moon in the sky, hoping that if I squint long enough maybe the light will illuminate the darkness not as a bad moon but in a good way. Just because it’s dark, doesn’t mean it’s bad. It could mean that there’s a good rising a’comin’. Maybe the lyric has been misheard all these years and is really “There’s a good moon on the right.”
People have been known to make mistakes… from time to time. I just seem to be making them time and time again.
Goodnight, moon.