Notes
"The greatest glory is not in never falling, but in rising every time you fall."
If that wasn't rising, I don't know what is.
Blisters are a small price to pay. A price I'm willing to pay.
The run afterwards, I needed it. I needed time to think. I listened to the same song for forty-five minutes. I felt like I could have just kept running forever and ever and ever. Or taken a nap. Either of the two. I just kind of forgot that I was running, and I just felt so contented and peaceful and calm, in contrast to the complete basketcase I was before and during the first three laps of my race.
I was panicking. I should not have run the 4x8. I was tired, my legs were burning while I was warming up, and then I started out the race in the exact place that I dreaded to be, the exact picture that had been torturing my brain since about, oh, Friday.
I went out slow on purpose, and that put me like second to last after the first lap. At first I thought "Man, this is going to suck, I really AM going to be like last." But then as I started passing them all and heard my splits, I got my confidence back and I knew that I had the focus and the determination and the experience and the 13-mile runs and the pain and the tears and the mental anguish that none of them did, and that's why I'm supposed to run the two-mile.
And that's why I'm going to be good at it.
To me, that race was a work of art. The kind of high you get from that, when you forget that you're even running, when you forget that the skin is being torn from the back of your ankles, when you forget that your muscles are screaming, and when you just have to smile because you enjoy the pain, because it lets you know that at least you're alive, that just can't be matched. Today was why I run.
One minute and four seconds. Six months. I think it can happen. I know it can. And it's going to.
"'Cause you can't jump the track, we're like cars on a cable
And life's like an hourglass, glued to the table
No one can find the rewind button girl,
So cradle your head in your hands...
And breathe,
Just breathe,
Woah breathe,
Just breathe..."