How do we measure progress? With running it’s easy. Mileage tracked, distance covered, pace, speed etc. There are stopwatches, heart rate monitors, GPS devices, and computer programs. If you are a pen and paper person there are journals specifically for recording your runs. You get official times in races, and there are tracks with distance measured to the meter.
With all of these tools it should be easy to set expectations. Run X number of miles to ensure you reach X distance goal. Run at X pace for X many times and you will hit that 5K PR you were after. But running just isn’t that predictable. I can go for 10 miles on one day and feel great, and an “easy” 4 miles another day will leave me with shin splints, and gasping for air. Some days I charge up hills without a thought. The same hills next week might seem like mountains. Are there variables for which I am not measuring? Certainly. But I doubt any of them would tell the whole story. The mystery to running that gets most of us out the door is until we are a couple of miles into it, we just don’t know what kind of run it will be.
This weekend, while on some of those great runs and simultaneously reeling from a relationship disappointment, I thought about the parallels between the two. Relationships, especially romantic ones, are full of mysteries similar to those of running. Everywhere people are trying to give us tools to explain how relationships work. There are hundreds of books on how to succeed at winning and keeping the person you want. Advice on how to find “the one” abounds and bombards us.
I realized trying to find the magic formula for either is impossible. As one friend said “it’s not like once you figure it out, you win.”
Running and relationships are instinctive, and our way of going about them is unique to us. Sure, we can learn from our mistakes and grow over time…I know I have in both cases. I know what works for me and what doesn’t, and have benefitted from the wisdom of others. But I haven’t “figured it out.” I don’t know the one way to ensure I have a great run or beat my marathon PR, and I don’t know how to have a perfect relationship.
What I do know is that the only way to find out is to get out the door and go for it. Maybe it will hurt this time. Maybe it will be effortless and filled with joy. I would love to say that even the hard ones teach me something but sometimes they are just hard. In those moments, I am just thankful that I tried, knowing the feeling of sitting on the couch and wondering “what if” is so much worse than any disappointment that comes from entering the race.
We’ll never know the magnitude of the love or joy we can experience, or our capacity for healing if we aren’t willing to risk the unknown. We can’t ever really be prepared for the moment until we are in it, despite our best efforts and planning. We can’t know what a new run or relationship will bring until we are already invested. Sometimes life is about having enough trust and faith in ourselves to begin; to put a little bit of our heart and soul on the line and see where it takes us. What we may find, if we are willing to take the risk, are experiences that can only be measured by the human spirit.
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