Fitness, Part Two

There was a time in my life when I hated running.  Not because of running itself, but because I thought that if I just owned a pair of shoes, had enough motivation to get my ass outside and go, that I would master it.  Oh No!  That is not so.  It’s been a humbling and extremely rewarding journey, one step at a time.

Running has been my game changer.  I will always love and continue to lift, but running has a different capacity for connection.  Whether it’s a speed workout on the track making your lungs burn and your heart pound and learning to zero in on the exact moment to go faster, climbing up a mountain or enduring hours of continuous running in a marathon, I had to learn how to run.  I didn’t have to teach my body that much – I had to teach my mind.   I had to learn breathing techniques so that I didn’t overuse one side of my body.  I had to learn how to slow my mind down so that I could work through the parts where I was sure I was dying, which exposed the need to meditate and brought the God that I know into my fitness.  I had to learn to trust my feet and my body going downhill and over rocks and roots.  I had to learn how to listen to my body, eventually learning how to isolate one thing at a time instead of falling to the blanket statement of “I can’t do this.”  I had to learn that the pain is temporary, no matter how great it feels in the moment.  I also got to watch the pain move around my body as my mind magnified its location and severity with each passing moment.

I also got to see the seasons change, fully, for the first time ever in my life this past fall training for a marathon.  It’s not that I hadn’t been awake or aware or didn’t work outside for eight years, but I never slowed down long enough to appreciate how much happens out there.  Running by yourself, fully immersed in the moment, will bring you down to Earth – literally.  You get to see sights from a perspective you can’t see in the car.  You get to escape into the woods and be amongst the trees and their silence when chatter with friends won’t grant you that opportunity.  You get to spend time with the body that essentially packs you around this planet, allowing you to experience it as much as you wish.  You get grateful, or at least I did.

When I wear a watch or know how many miles I’m running, my mind fucks me.  It starts to tell me that we’re done, that my legs are too tired, that this is stupid, that no sane person would spend this much time moving – ever.  Rucking exposed this mentality, too.  It sounds simple – put a heavy ass pack on your back and start moving.  And it is simple.  But as with most simple things in life, like running and rucking and really anything we attach, we can complicate them and make them very hard.  Carrying weight is not a new concept.  Carrying weight for extended periods of time isn’t either.  But carrying weight through the night, without a watch, with a bunch of strangers, under the mercy of someone else with an agenda to make you tired – is different.  It will force you into the now.  It will force you into submission.  For me, it forced me into gratitude and compassion (for self and others), and presence of mind.  It brought incredible energy to wanting to help the person next to me, and do as much as I could as often as I could to work as a team.  There were no winners or losers – we were all fighting together. It’s amazing what happened without a watch, without the knowledge of time or the tracking of distance.  My mind had nothing to grab, so I could stay where I was and fiercely enjoy the fire my body endured throughout the night, with the people around me. 

Your mind will always tell you that you can’t.  Or, if you work hard enough at your mind, it will always tell you that you can.  Fitness does that to you, no matter how big or how small your pursuit.  It could be learning how to squat (I am still doing this).  It could be learning how to Zumba (I will never do this).  It could be learning how to enjoy walking around at lunch instead of sitting with your coworkers.  It could be stretching.  It could be anything, literally, because the mind is attached to the body. 

And that is what fitness has taught me, and introduced me to: my mind.  It has shown me that no matter how impossible it seems, that within enough time and determination, nothing ever is.  It has taught me that no, my worth is not the placement in any race or the time I cross my finish line or practice time.  It has taught me that my worth is what I believe it to be, within the confines that I place.  It has taught me that the body is a heroic machine and deserves my friendship, loyalty and unconditional love.  The body will do anything for you – if you treat it well.  The body will take you to places, literally and figuratively, you never dreamed of going.  It is our gift to explore this world and a means of transportation to do so.

I dare you to go out and explore your body and let it take you to a place you think you cannot go.  Because I bet with enough preparation and enough determination and enough grit, you will get there.  And you will enjoy it when you’re there.  

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