18 weeks in coming

I’m going to start this post off simply to introduce a complicated topic I usually never talk about.

<drumroll>

This past Sunday, 18 weeks of training culminated in my running the Philadelphia marathon.

Ta-da!

Personal history and character would dictate that this normally isn’t something I would share with the general public.  I usually talk about things that happen to me, and not things that I do.  In fact, my own mother didn’t find out I was training for the marathon until some five or six weeks into the process.  Which was a decidedly calculated move on my part, not because I didn’t want to tell her, but because I knew she wouldn’t understand and I didn’t feel like dealing with the host of questions and discouragement that would rain about my unprotected head.

Some of you (Americans) might find it odd that this feat would be dissuaded.  However, it totally makes sense to me: what’s been encouraged in the past has been dedication to studying, studying, studying, playing/listening to classical music, studying, studying, studying, and then studying some more.  Which, when looked at from the point of view of what really is going to get me further in life, makes sense.  I would constantly be reminded that whatever it is I learn can’t be taken away from me.  Which is also is true!  This is all very sage and wise advice from a very intelligent person who studied a lot, worked a lot, and as a result, has successfully been able to raise not one, but TWO crazy girls.  So when the news surfaced that one of the Gyorfi girls was going to be running 26.2 miles at some point in the designated future, the information was met with curiosity and some resistance.  Did Einstein ever run a marathon?  Did Marie Curie every run a marathon?  Did that 18 year old resident at the hospital who got straight As all throughout med school ever run a marathon?  NO!  And guess what?  They were/are all successful!

SO, as I started to get chafe marks every place my clothes had seams, as I watched with fascination as my chests shrank down a full cup size, as I noted the very odd splotchy tan I am beginning to suspect I permanently got on the backs of my legs, I knew that a reckoning would have to come, and that I would have to explain to my mother, to the world, and to myself why I ever ran a marathon.  And it is a COMPLICATED answer.

I didn’t do this because someone came up to me and said “Adrianne, I don’t think you can run a marathon.”  Nor did I do this to get in shape, or because I really wanted to tell someone that I’ve run a marathon.  Running a marathon was never a thing to do on my list of things to do before I die.  In fact, I think I remember saying a few years ago that I would never be able to run a marathon if my life depended on it.

In this end, it turns out that there are several reasons I did this, the most compelling reason probably being because nobody expected me to run one, most of all myself.  I have never considered myself athletic, or been considered fit by anyone.  And I’m not saying this for any response telling me I’m speaking nonsense.  One year ago, nay, 5 months ago, running 8 miles would have been asking me to fly.  I would go for my brief jaunts through the park, entering it eager to embrace a healthy lifestyle and to be reinvigorated with my blood coursing through my veins , leaving the park a half hour later looking like I had been tied to the back of a big rig going 80 mph down the I-5.  I abhorred exercising from an early age, I detested swim team, but what I hated most of all was when I would be greeted by family and friends who I hadn’t seen for a while exclaiming how much weight I had lost or put on.  As if that were the only thing different about me since they had last seen me, or the only thing I had accomplished.  I realize this was not the intention of people, but LORD is it rough seeing the good intentions of people when you’re already insecure about every blessed thing about yourself.  And these occurrences aren’t a thing of the past, and don’t stop irritating me even if they aren’t directed at me.  A friend of mine had a bad infection, dropped some 20 odd pounds in a matter of weeks, and I was horrified to learn the mother was kind of broken up about her gaining 15 of the pounds back several months later.  Because the girl didn’t look NEARLY as great as when she was thinner.  And these are the people telling us to not be shallow and worry about the way we look.  If we aren’t supposed to worry about the way we look, then perhaps the first things they should ask us when they see us is if we’ve read any good books recently instead of running their eyes up and down our body and letting us know that we look thinner since the last time we met and that it’s great.  Because then guess what young, impressionable, insecure girls will worry about the next they meet again?

And then there was also the fact that it felt so GOOD to have a defined goal again at this point in my life.  In school, I studied and got a grade.  If I studied more, it would be likely I would get a better grade.  And now, not that I’m not working toward anything, but I needed something for myself that I could achieve all by myself and that someone wasn’t pushing me to do.  This was something I did that those closest to me might not understand and would have absolutely no tangible results, no title I could add before or after my name, and would not guarantee that I could land a better job in the future because I got a higher degree.  The benefits I think are strictly limited to character and experience, because do you know what it’s like to run 16 miles in the rain, alone?  It sucks.  And do you know what’s even worse?  Running 20 miles in the rain, alone.  But these are things that can be done.  And this is something that I learned (that, and that if there is a seam, there will be chafing), that I never expected to know, and now that I know it, no one can ever take it away from me.  In the end, I don’t think it really mattered that the marathon was 26.2 miles.  It could have been 10 miles, or it could have been 200.  The number I think is there just to impress other people.  What was far more important to me was that I stuck with something that was hard to achieve that I decided to do for reasons initially unclear to me, that I figured out along the way, and that I ultimately ended up grateful for doing alone.

As it stands now, maybe I’ll run another marathon in the future.  Maybe I won’t.  If I do or don’t, I’m sure I’ll have my reasons for it.  I’m also not laboring under the delusion that now that I have run a marathon, I am completely confident, goal-oriented, and able to finish anything I put my mind to.  I’ll still be keenly aware of any sort of remark made about my image, I’ll still probably be terribly nervous about the future, and I’ll still feel self-deprecating and unaccomplished.  However, I feel like perhaps I’ve taken one small step in the right direction to know that I can do things I didn’t expect I could do, and that sometimes the big picture only comes together once you stop constantly asking yourself why a goal is so hard to reach.

Happy Thanksgiving!

Advertisement