Running on Envy — Midlife Run

Envy. One of the seven deadly sins. Our culture promotes it, and our conscience fights against it. But there are times when envy just sucks you in, and this week the Boston Marathon was my undoing. The more I read about it, watched coverage of it, and was pinged on social media with happy pictures of it, the more I wanted a piece of Boston for myself.

And nothing makes you want something more than when it is not only out of your reach now, but may always be out of your reach.

A lucky lottery day is not the only thing required to get into the Boston Marathon. You have to back up your desire with talent and speed. For me, that means finding an extra 40 minutes to shave over the course of 26.2 miles. Impossible? Quite likely. Impossible enough to make me quit before trying? Hell no.

The truth is that the temptation of Boston has been whispering to me for months. At the NYC Marathon expo, vendors displayed their wares including hooks to hang your flight of medals from running all of the Majors: New York, Chicago, London, Berlin, Tokyo … and Boston. I almost bought one but the prospect of the Boston peg remaining empty, forever, was enough to keep my credit card in my wallet.

When I was searching for the next big thing after New York I researched races from all corners of the globe, in search of a race to inspire me and provide an opportunity to raise awareness for a cause close to my heart. What made me settle on Chicago? It’s a Major, it is in one of America’s greatest cities … and it is one of the main Boston qualifying feeder races because the course is flat and fast.

The rational me - the me who wakes up feeling grateful for life, for family, for the ability to go outside and simply run - knows that the pursuit of goals rooted in envy is a worthless and empty endeavor. But in the case of this particular race, my envy of those who have had the privilege and good fortune to run Boston is undeniable.

I have spent a lot of time wondering why this particular jealous ache? I can look at gorgeous, seasonally themed desserts on Pinterest and while the pictures are incredible, they do not inspire to me to do much more than bake a batch of Toll House cookies. I know women who are accomplished triathletes – from Iron Man finishers to Xterra professionals – and I am in awe. But I am sure that hell will freeze over before I go out for another open water swim. So what is it about the Marathon Majors and Boston? Why do I dare to even think about pursuing those?

I found my answer in, of all places, a memoir written by Stephen King. While his paragraph focuses on talent, I have the nerve (found only in the ego of a novice writer) to edit Mr. King’s work to include the concept of passion:

… when you find something at which you are talented [or about which you are passionate], you do it (whatever it is) until your fingers bleed or your eyes are ready to fall out of your head. Even when no one is listening (or reading, or watching), every outing is a bravura performance, because you as the creator are happy. Perhaps even ecstatic. That goes for reading and writing as well as for playing a musical instrument, hitting a baseball, or running the four-forty ... [The] strenuous program … will not seem strenuous if you really enjoy doing these things and have an aptitude [and passion] for them.”

On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft, Stephen King.

The pursuit of the impossible, the strenuous work that is the backbone of achieving your goals, the risk of chasing something that you may never catch becomes not just tolerable but enjoyable when it is something that ignites a light within you.

And so I run.

WelcomE!

The obligatory "about me" ...

I am a California attorney, wife and mother to two teenagers. Thanks to some fierce prodding by my brother and unwavering support from my family, I started to write again (hence, the blog), and to run again (training for the New York City Marathon). After all, if you are going to get in the game, you might as well go all-in. You can find out more about my story here.

November 1, 2019

This Is Fifty

When I first started this writing space and was trying on different names for what ultimately became Midlife Run, I struggled. Solidly in my forties, the idea of attaching the word “midlife” to anything seemed like an unwelcome, uncomfortable stretch reserved for the after-fifty set. But I settled into the name, comforted by the knowledge that I was on the “early side” of midlife. Not so any more. Last month we dropped our youngest at college thus marking the beginning of the “empty nester years” and today, as I start to write this, I turn fifty. I am solidly, undeniably, in midlife.

August 19, 2019

It's Almost Here: The Empty Nest!

In my memory, I cannot think of a more seismic shift in our marriage than when we had children. The first sign that our world was about to be rocked actually happened when our first bun was still in the oven and we were standing outside of a Denver bar. It wasn’t late, we were with good friends, and good times were being had by all, especially by those (not me) enjoying a night of craft beer and pool. By that point in my pregnancy, my body was changing and bulging, I had given up caffeine, alcohol, and hot baths and traded them for binge-eating apples. My pregnancy and impending motherhood were feeling tangibly real in a way that it wasn’t (yet) for my husband. And that night, with festivities just warming up, I was standing by the car asking my husband not to go in and to come home with me instead because I was exhausted and sick with pregnancy. If you ask him now, he doesn’t remember that night. I do. In his eyes and in his body-language was a man coming to terms with our new and changing reality. As we looked at each other we silently acknowledged that our lives would never be the same. What we want, what we do, how we see the world, and how we prioritize our lives no longer involved just the two of us. There was going to be a third member of our family, and eventually a fourth, and nothing, ever, not even a night out with friends, would be quite so simple any more.

May 20, 2019

Lucky Me (Guest Post by Andrew J. Pridgen)

My excuses for why I’m not going to perform well in a race while I toe the starting line roll up like opening credits in a movie. Written by: Lack of preparation, Directed by: Insecurity, Executive produced by: My shoes don’t feel right, Casting by: I can barely breathe and my ankle already hurts. Starring: Me.

April 3, 2019

Walk Slowly with Me

Our family is not one to stand still. We fall easily into the pace of rushed crowds on New York City streets, and we barrel ahead in pursuit of goals. We move forward, and then we move forward again. Even our family walks seem to be driven, marching along familiar neighborhood paths, distracted by conversation, and, for the past twelve years, led by our trusty furry companion, Lucy, whose entry into our family was the very thing that initiated this nightly routine.

January 13, 2019

New Year's Resolution: Do One Thing

I have a shrink-wrapped cork board leaning against the wall to the right of my desk, clearly within view. It’s been standing sentinel in the same spot for months, waiting for me to deal with it and daring me to get on with it already. Its purpose is to be a vision board of sort, a place for me organize my goals, to lay them out in a way that my left-leaning brain can process and check them off, mixed together with other bits designed to spark my still developing right-brain to creativity. I look at that cork board regularly with the same dread that someone with writer’s block stares at a blinking curser on a blank screen.

December 9, 2018

NYC Marathon: Challenge, Growth, and Celebration

When you tell someone – especially a non-runner someone – that you are going to run a marathon, you’re generally met with some version of a respectful “that’s great … good for you.” Contrast, when you tell someone that you are going to run the NYC Marathon, there’s a special, heightened aura that surrounds what surely, inevitably, will be nothing short of an epic race.

November 3, 2018

Life’s a Journey ... The Road to NYC Marathon 2018

Mostly, though, there has been an extraordinarily emotional undercurrent to this training cycle because it is impossible for me to look forward to this marathon without looking back to my 2015 NYC Marathon, and examining with wonder how one stacked series of events can make your whole life pivot until you find yourself on a trajectory you never could have imagined.

September 15, 2018

Creating Space, Building Strength

In my ordinary life, there is room for writing, for running, for meaningful conversations, and for balance. My life right now is not ordinary. It is frenetic, and it is all but consumed by a single work endeavor. It leaves me starving for sleep and time with family, it led me to write a middle of the night SOS to my coach about my NYC marathon training, and it is accompanied by a level of stress and adrenaline that can keep me going now, but in the long run is unsustainable. Gratefully, I am not alone in this experience, and I have my ultimate support crew (husband and family) behind me.

June 27, 2018

Don't Sweat the Small Stuff Because There Will Be Plenty of Big Stuff: Reflections on 25 Years of Marriage

Certain milestones simply make me pause. Today is a big one – our 25th wedding anniversary. By any measure, that is a legitimately long time to spend marching through life next to the same person. It has me looking back in wonder about how we got to this point, looking forward trying to guess what is ahead, and reflecting broadly about what I know now about the two of us together and the life-long project of building a marriage. Unsurprisingly, I have a few thoughts.

March 29, 2018

That Family Place

When my Dad was young, the annual family pilgrimage took them to Lake Tahoe during the summer, where his family would stay in a small cabin on the north shore, the boys would catch crawdads between the boulders jutting out from the Lake, and skip smooth, flat rocks over the water’s surface. I know these things because when my parents took my brother and me to the same lake shore, and years later after the next generation joined us, my parents would tell the stories. The connection to Lake Tahoe is now four generations deep, and with every new year and new family member or friend who joins us, the memories deepen and years of family stories from this special place transform into epic lore.