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

I am writing this from 37,000 feet in the air, jetting my way across the country to New York, where this Sunday I will be joining a gang of 50,000 runners carving a collective path through the five boroughs, bounded by an almost solid wall of volunteers and kind, enthusiastic souls cheering us on for the full 26.2. My long build up to this year’s race has not been without its obstacles. Life and career demands aren’t always forgiving when it comes to prescribed marathon training, and when I put my body through all the miles these days, every once in awhile it decides to bite back - what new hell are you trying to put me through now? 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.

For the uninitiated, I blame (or give credit to) my brother for getting me into the predicament that was my entry into the 2015 NYC Marathon. In 2013, our father was diagnosed with terminal cancer which was the practical equivalent of setting off an emotional bomb in our family. I was trying to manage life in a deep, grief-driven fog during that period of my life, and found myself taking my tired and sorely-out-of-shape body out for runs to cope. It gave me alone time to cry and be fiercely angry, it gave me a different pain to focus on, and it - and the passage of time - eventually brought me some measure of healing. My father passed away on January 15, 2014 - my brother’s birthday. A year later, the organizers of the NYC Marathon announced that the marathon lottery would open on January 15. “It’s a sign” my brother declared - we were meant to run this marathon together - brother and sister - won’t it be great?! Predictably, I got in and my brother got a one way ticket to the cheap seats watching the marathon madness unfold from the comfort of his couch.

But, Mr. Bright Ideas wasn’t done yet. A couple of weeks after my entry into the 2015 NYC Marathon, he sent me this text: “You should blog about it.” Welcome to the birth of Midlife Run.

I’ve written plenty about the journey to the 2015 start line, and the overwhelming joy of the day. Extraordinary. But, waiting at the start village, I was overwhelmed, anxious, and insecure. Alone. Every one of the other 50,000 runners seemed to have friends, or a well rehearsed pre-race routine. Me, I was just trying to blend in and hold it together, trying my damnedest not to look like an imposter, and trying unsuccessfully to both absorb and process the fullness of the experience. My family was scattered around New York City, poised to jump from spot to spot on the course, and our daughter was camped out on the family room floor at her uncle and aunt’s house ready to track my progress on an app while my husband, son, mom and her soon-to-be husband relayed messages to them. My web of support was deep, but they couldn’t run the race for me. Again, alone. Scared. Intimidated as fuck.

A lot of things have happened since that day in 2015. But mostly this: I’ve grown.

I dared to step far outside of my comfort zone, and have met people and embraced experiences I otherwise never would have known. I have practiced pressing my body to move past discomfort and have started to learn how to rely on the power of mind and heart to guide me through. I am beginning to view my still persistent insecurities as an opportunity to pause and ask, why? And what exactly are you prepared to do to grow beyond the self-doubt? I have spent hours playing with words and rediscovering a passion I had all but given up. I’ve learned that my voice matters. And how I choose to spend every day matters. I choose to live, I choose to grow, I choose to learn.

Sunday’s marathon still scares and excites me, but now I know that I won’t be alone in those emotions.

When I stand at that start tomorrow, I will look up to the heavens, with a nod to my Dad, and give thanks for everything and everyone that brought me to this moment. I will channel the love, the lessons of general bad-assery, and the collective strength of my family and extraordinary web of friends. With confidence, I will own the moment, and own who I am in that moment. With all of my years, with all of my faults, with all of my strengths, with all of my insecurities, with every bit of who I am today.

And then I will run with joy.

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.