“There are many things that seem impossible
only so long as one does not attempt them.”

— André Paul Guillaume Gide

–‘

What if I’m done?

I ran across Texas once in June because Eleanor Roosevelt told me I had to do it. Back then, I was bulletproof. Give me a pair of racing flats and a good excuse, and I’d take on anything.

When you’re young, the sky’s the limit. And there’s so much sky. Endless horizons, climbs that go on forever, always another challenge to be conquered. I thought it would never end.

I felt crappy today, hovering between tired and dead. Mo asked me how long I’ve felt like this. I said I wasn’t sure. Somewhere between all morning and the last 10 years. At some point do you just recalibrate and accept awful as the new normal?

Maybe I’m trying to do too much, or not trying to do enough. Or both.

I guess I’m not so much worried about the flying part. It’s the landing that’s scary.

I thought I knew the half of it,
I only knew the rest
And what if I forget how to land one day?

Jay Bennett (the other Jay) wrote that. I know how he felt. And then he died.

It’s easy to jump off of the building. Avoiding a Wile E. Coyote conclusion is the tricky part.

I have a desperate need to immerse myself in this insanity. I know it doesn’t make any sense, but neither does running in general. Suffering for something I will never be able to explain. Or understand.

“Guilt is the unlived life,” the prophet Sheehan said in Running & Being, the closest thing I’ll ever have to a bible. I live with the fear of letting my last few years skate by, a victim of caution and concern. The clock is ticking. There’s no pause button.

And so I’ll confer tomorrow with Coach Kim. He’ll make another joke about my impending obituary before confidently pushing me out the door on recovery runs that will increasingly take on the cadence of death marches, leading to death marches that take on the cadence of life. Monkeys banging on typewriters longing to make the stars weep and all that.

I will embrace the heat and the pain and the fear and the monotony and the knowledge that the third act is well underway, and the curtain is waiting.

And still, I will feel like a kid again. Could there by any activity more pure, more joyful, more perfect than the daily run?

I will run the mile I’m in. And the next one. And one more. Until one day I’m done.

These upcoming races seem so impossible. They always do.

I suppose that’s what draws me to them.

“You must do the thing you think you cannot do,” Eleanor said that day.

And so I shall.

I hope I remember how to land.