Another Lesson Learned From the Running Life

"Slow down and everything you are chasing will come around and catch you." ~ John De Paola

If you haven't figured it out yet I am a runner and I love it. I run even when nobody or nothing is chasing me with a community of "like-minded idiots" as I call the running club I have been a part of for over three years. This group of people of all ages, abilities, backgrounds and ethnicities is quite possibly the most positive collection of souls I have ever met. After all, the newbies who join us each year actually believe they can finish their "goal races" of the 5K, 10K, half marathon, or marathon, or even the ultimate tests of the 50K, or 50 or 100 mile ULTRA races, having never achieved these goals in the past. We are truly a crazy conglomeration of humanity.

It is June and we are all between training. Winter/Spring training ended with races in April through the first weekends of May. Summer/Fall training begins the last Saturday of June. So what is an endorphin-starved person to do? You sign up for a half marathon the second weekend of June, the Race 13.1, to maintain your "fightin' fitness," hoping Mother Nature won't throw a premature jolt of heat and humidity to spoil the party.

The previous year's race had been moved inexplicably from the gentle coolness of a late May schedule to a June date and was a scorcher with temperatures nearing the 90s and accompanying humidity. Nonexistent were the flower-covered fields along the path from previous years. Runners were met with a route more suited to filming a dystopian, post-apocalyptic science fiction movie than a race through picturesque greenways and wildlife preserves. It was memory burned into the minds of the runners who endured the ordeal. There were no fond recollections of this race, which thinned this year's race participant count.

I had run a half marathon in early May in which I PR'd (personal record) so this was going to be a fun run, at a pace where I could enjoy myself and the company of friends along the way. There were a number of us who gathered prior to the race from the running club and we all commiserated about what pace we would go so we could enjoy ourselves.

"At least it's not as hot as last year," I heard someone say.

But it was becoming hot enough!

Just prior to the race our running club team gathered and separated into groups with similar pace goals for the day. Six of us agreed on a pace suitable for enjoying the race on a day that was quickly becoming sunny and almost cloudless, unlike the weather predictions for mostly cloudy and cool-ish conditions. The National Anthem was played and we were off.

Soon it was clear that a few in our group were going to push it a bit harder and they separated from us within the first mile of the 13.1 . Had I not heard a voice of reason next to me from a runner with much more experience, I would probably have joined them.

"Let them go," she said.

And we did.

We ran a smart race. As the heat burned and the elevation of the course increased, decreased and increased again we would slow, walk, increase and decrease our pace. For weeks the weather had been rainy and cool yet somehow humid at the same time - a perfect greenhouse - and Mother Nature greeted us with her full array of flora. We noticed the Black-eyed Susans, the daisies. We slowed to smell the roses, and the honeysuckles, and almost careened into each other on a stretch of the trail covered totally in mud.

We came, we saw, we laughed.

We had a grand time. We finished, together.

It was a life lesson learned.

Sometimes you just have to slow down. You can enjoy the moments without competing. There is enough time for the fast pace, for the "let's go for it" mentality.

Sometimes it's OK to just ... let ... go and enjoy what the Great Creator has laid out.

You can simply Live, Laugh, AND Enjoy!

Try it sometime. At your own pace!

. . . keep coming back

"Nature does not hurry, yet everything is accomplished." ~ Lao Tzu