Next steps

I survived and even did reasonably well at one of the toughest races I have ever run yesterday. It was the Queens Half Marathon and it wasn't so tough because the course was particularly hilly or because I wasn't in shape but because the conditions were particularly brutal: hot and humid already at 7 am when the race started. Having had to get up at 4:30 am was no help. Standing at the start, I was feeling rather unready, somewhat even unwell, surrounded by hundreds of sweating bodies the thought of having to run for 2 hours seemed daunting. By mile 2 my body was already giving me signals that it didn't want to keep going. 11 more to go. I tried not to think about numbers. During a long race, mile markers can be your best friend and biggest enemy all at once. Seeing Mile 12 coming up ahead might be a great relief, but only if you have enough juice left to go one more mile. Yesterday, I really had no clue whether I could one or 10 more miles. I found myself desperatly looking forward to certain mile markers, but it seemed that the sign came all the slower the more I was longing to see it. So at one point I decided that I was going to try very hard to just focus on what was going on right there at that moment I was hanging in.

And that there is the beauty of running. Your body is screaming STOP NOW! But you know, because you have trained in hot humid weather, mile after mile, that you can do it. I recently heard in a radio show about limits that the way we are built, our bodies' warning systems work a little too efficiently. This makes sense given that this would greatly enhance an individual's chances for survival: this warning system doesn't allow us to push our bodies to the absolute limit, it tells us to stop much earlier. Apparently, much much earlier than it would be safe. They described a really interesting experiment in this radio program: they had competitive athletes riding stationary bikes for hours and they devided them into 2 groups: one group received just water while the other got a sports drink which has lots of sugar, but both groups were only allowed to swish the liquid in their mouths and then spit it out. Surprisingly, the group swishing with the sports drink performed much better. Presumably, this has to do with receptors in the mouth sensing the sugar (energy) in the drink and sending a signal to the brain that it was ok to keep going because there was more energy coming, even though there was really no more energy at all given that they all spat the drink out. So, as it often turns out to be the case, it is all in our heads. We think that we cannot do more and so we stop and can claim that we were at our limits. Or we can get past that limitation of thoughts and have the willpower to keep going. That is exactly what distinguishes great athletes from ordinary ones. I am not saying I am a great athlete :) but I do believe in myself and in the power of the mind and the power we can have over the mind.

When things get tough physically, everything else becomes very simple. When you are at - or so you think - your limit, the only thing that remains important is taking that next step. One foot in front of the next, over and over again, until you reach the finish line. For me, it took 2 hours and 3 minutes yesterday, which, given the circumstances, was not even so bad. I am proud of myself because I beat my mind when it told me to stop.

It's this simplicity that is so amazing; getting out of the usual vortex of thoughts. Nothing else matters but that next step. I wish other things in life could be so simple. I wish people could live in the present moment and be able to experience whatever it is in that moment instead of constantly looking into the past for memories and the future for wishes and dreams. If we just all focused on what was right there in front of us, we would all be so much happier!