Still a Runner

It was the first cold, cloudy day of the year. I had already decided that I needed a long run. A run that I wasn’t totally conditioned for. Something that would stretch me. Something that would hurt. I needed the distance, and the cool, damp air to think. I needed sad songs and a chance to leave my tears on the hills behind me. It was one of those days where choosing the harder route was an easy decision. This was no time to take it easy. Bring on the hills. Bring on the wind.

These are the runs that are about more than running. They are about fighting back.

 Life can be pretty cruel sometimes. Heartbreak and disappointment can show up in the most inconvenient places. At the end of a week filled with emotional roller coasters of events, I traded one confusion for a painful certainty. With a few words in a seemingly innocent conversation, a truth I never wanted to hear became clear. An end to a relationship I wondered about and, against my better judgment, placed some hope in. It’s the kind of moment you replay over and over hoping that upon review the words on the tape different. They aren’t. What you wanted will never be. The end.

I tried to maintain balance and composure with the world spinning around me. Seconds later, mother nature released the tears from the sky that I had to hold back from my own eyes, washing all of that hope and wonder right into the gutter and leaving me standing there trying to figure out how to breathe in the rain.

 I spent some time on the couch with sad songs and a box of tissues.

And then I decided to run a long way. I had to. There is something about emotional pain that begs for a release. Grief, loss, disappointment, heartbreak, these things need a place to go. In this case, they couldn’t be targeted at a person…there is no one to blame when things just don’t work out. Rather than try to make someone responsible for my pain, I decided to run with it.

 The problem with sudden loss, grief and disappointment is that the world doesn’t stop to let us feel it, and yet there is no way through it if we don’t. Running allows me to experience my heartbreak and reminds me that I can keep moving forward; I still have some strength and energy somewhere. It reminds me that I am alive and breathing and that my broken heart still beats. These runs are about meeting that emotional pain with my physical strength and endurance. They are about accepting life’s sadness without letting it define me. I am hurt. I am broken. But I am going to stay in the race. Tears, sad songs, pain and all. Even on the hardest days, in the saddest of moments, I am still a runner.