The Agony and the Ecstasy

OK, you know I didn’t come up with the phrase “the agony and the ecstasy,” but ever since I first heard the title of Irvine Stone’s biographical novel of Michelangelo—let’s see, I must have been in middle school then, and I can still smell that intriguing aroma of old paper that permeated the first floor of the Preston city library—the words have resonated with me.

I am no artist. I am engaged in no masterpiece. But even ordinary mortals like me can know what it is to have a passion that drives you, a pursuit both painful and exquisite. As it says in the Book of Mormon, “For it must needs be, that there is an opposition in all things” (2 Nephi 2:11). As Bono sings in a classic U2 song, “I can’t live with or without you.” Joy and pain are mixed up together. Rewards require sacrifice. Great rewards require great sacrifice.

I’d never run a whole mile when I first heard of Irving Stone. I had different pursuits then, before the miles took me over. Now running is a solace, a friend, a hard taskmaster that shapes my world above and beyond the role of a regular daily workout. Last month, in Sweden in June, I experienced the ecstasy: such an incredible high, coming off that terrible run in the worst conditions I’ve faced, and knowing that I finished in spite of all my doubts and fears. I felt, as I wrote at the time, that I could do anything.

And I’d been back from Sweden only a week when suddenly I couldn’t manage my normal routine. I have these “bad spells” now and then, periods of physical and mental rebellion—it’s hard to figure out sometimes where the physical aspect ends and the mental one begins. I knew my willpower was tired. But my body wasn’t working right, either, and that became more apparent as the days went on, as they turned into weeks when I fought hard to complete a fraction of my usual mileage. I avoided looking at my photos from Sweden. I felt swallowed up in a new reality. The smiling woman in Sweden became an image of myself I feared I could never live up to again.

She looks stronger than I am

Eventually, lab results offered some objective explanations for my sluggishness. I spent a night in the hospital with red “Be positive” flowing into my veins. I left the next morning with orders to take iron supplements and a dozen (or so it seemed!) other vitamins. I am not usually good at sticking to a vitamin regimen, but I went right to the store—well, OK, after going for a run—and I bought iron supplements at the prescribed dose, which turns out to be an impressive 361% of the recommended daily value for the general population. The supplements had better be potent, though, because I am pinning a lot of hopes on them.

Gradually, more gradually than I would like, I seem to be returning to “normal.” I just finished a week of running back at my usual level. It’s frustrating, as I surface out of this trough, to wonder what the next few weeks hold. I wanted to run three more marathons before the end of the year. So far, I am registered for only one more, the Hamptons Marathon at the end of September. I can only hope I’ll be feeling good at that point. But there is always uncertainty, and I have missed out on planned marathons before. There are stress fractures and freak snowstorms on the beach (see White Holiday Mixup). I think all I can do in the moments of agony is remind myself that there are two more words in the Irving Stone title. I intend to keep running for a long, long time, and the moments of ecstasy will come around again.