Begin Again

Soon I'm heading out to Idaho for the Boise Marathon, my second race in my home state. My first Idaho marathon, back in 2008, yielded a still-unbroken PR and a rather awesome division first-place trophy--but I'm not competing with 2008 this month. Many times since my last blog post in November, I've thought to myself, "I guess it WAS the end, after all." Not the end of running, which is ... unimaginable. But the end of a beautiful era in which marathoning and traveling and snapping photos of old buildings and beaches and European McDonald's signs felt exciting and sparkly, and posting my musings here on this blog created another dimension of reality. Here I could be only the runner and the person I wanted to be, with all the bad filtered out (Delete-Delete-Delete, so easy, so clean!). The blog is like memories: when you look back from enough distance, you can gloss over the uglier realities of mortality. When I recall my anguished moments in a port-a-potty in Sweden, for example, what stands out now isn't my fear or my rain-soaked physical discomfort but that triumphant moment of bursting out the door and back onto the running path through the storm. How I've elevated that moment in my mind, and yet I know at the time I didn't feel triumphant or determined as much as desperate. I was continuing on toward the finish line because I couldn't figure out any better way to get home.

My Stockholm run took place in June 2012, and though I came home from Sweden feeling strong, I was in a hospital within a month receiving a transfusion of "Be Positive" blood cells. Anemia clamped down hard on my frantic workout pace. The transfusion helped, as they always do for me, but it reminded me of that specter--the darker side of my running. Marathoning remained compelling, but it lost a little sparkle. At the beginning of 2013, the story of the Pope's retirement captured my imagination because it fed my own yearning to be finished, finally, to reach the end of my hard race. When I was just starting out with marathons, I learned to comfort myself with the reminder, "It is finite. It is long, but it is finite." I'm sure that applies to other things, too, but it can be difficult to remember when the struggle exceeds my typical four-hour race time.

I wrestled with what I wanted this blog to be. How it helped, at times, to pour out my thoughts here in honesty: there is a problem with what I'm doing, there is a distortion, and I am not the only one who suffers. On the one hand, it didn't seem wise to go on and on about what led to my visits to Camp and Prison. On the other, it feels impossible sometimes to go on and on about anything else.

But here's what I've realized since my last post. Running is hard, and writing is hard, and I'm not as good at either as I'd like to be. I do them still, because they call to me. I've run four marathons since November: in Kiawah, SC; Myrtle Beach, SC; Washington, DC; and Charlottesville, VA. They are four moments in time, and four miracles. The years since I've been running are marked and measured by marathons. "Oh, that was the year I went to Norway, and I remember ..." I still don't know what this blog should be--or rather, I have an idea that I should fill it with useful information about marathon logistics and hotel reviews--but what's meant the most to me are the personal accounts I would not have recorded if I had not been writing posts. My last four marathons have been memorable, as all marathons are, but I'm afraid of letting them recede in time with nothing more substantial than memory to hang on to them.

Last month I listened to the worldwide conference of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, and I found myself particularly excited by a few talks, one referencing the Olympic performances of some members of the Church. I've never been to the Olympics, but in hearing about the intense moments of physical competition, I couldn't help reflecting on my marathons. I knew then that it meant something to me to write about them. Sometimes I wonder, Why do I run at all? In the darkness of January, I thought it would kill me. But in a marathon, life is reduced to the essence. You sense what is real. There is rock and sky and shade. You are on a knife's edge between what is possible and what is beyond you. You are alone but not alone. In those moments, I have felt carried, watched over. I have been sustained from breath to breath.

And I don't want to forget about that. So let the blog go on.