Sometimes I talk to myself on a run. It’s usually when I’m hitting some mental and emotional wall and I try and rally myself, coaxing just another mile, another step, ANYTHING more. I say to myself, “C’mon, Kevin! Dig deep. You can do this!” Sometimes it works; more often than not I just seem like a crazy person muttering to himself… and in the third person no less!
Today was one of those days. I would bargain with myself — just make it to the next mile and then maybe you can walk a bit. No? Not that pole? How about that fifth telephone pole down the way? The third one? What about that crack in the sidewalk? Maybe just one more step?
I try and break things down into ever smaller goals during these moments, trying to convince myself that if I can make it just to that point, well, I can take advantage of having made it through one goal and try and parlay that into achieving another, farther distance goal.
But the grind of the day today came super early in the run. By mile 3, I was already bargaining and not in the “make it to the next mile” amounts. I had STARTED with, “Just to that telephone pole, Kevin! You can do– oh, no, you can’t. Um, how about just… oh, we’re walking? That’s what we’re doing? Walking? Um, okay. But how about just to that crack in the sidewalk and then we can try run– oh, no we’re past that crack and still walking. The pole then? Oh, no… just ambling, I see… how about THAT pole– on, um… three poles then? How about that?”
Me and my shadow running partner struggled mightily. And I wouldn’t say we succeeded per se… there was A LOT of walking… but we did FINISH the distance. So there’s some joy in that.
But yowza. If this were some dystopian future movie directed by Starsky (or was it Hutch? Pretty sure Paul Michael Glaser was Starsky), I’d have been wiped out by any number of the “stalkers.” There would have been no need to call in Captain Freedom, that’s for sure.
But thankfully, I’ll be back tomorrow… hopefully with a little more glide and a little less grind.
“C’mon, Kevin. Dig deep. You can do this.”