Four miles doesn’t seem like much. After all, I’d run a Half
that January. What’s four miles? But there was something special in those runs.
For whatever reason, K and I weren’t running together a lot that summer,
although we were still updating each other frequently on our logged miles. I
think it had something to do with my ITB injury post-Half. But I finally
rejoined the running world, and was running about three miles every-other-day,
and she upped her distance to four.
I wondered if I could do that. At the time, I was running a
path that had gotten stale. I had a horrendous mental hang-up associated with
this route, and no matter how many times I ran it, I couldn’t get well over two
miles before I needed a break. The path was a straight out-and-back, from my
driveway, up the street, out to the main road, turn around at the corner
intersection and come back. The particular corner is a bit of a sharp turn, and
there’s enough brush there to block your view of the main road if you don’t
continue all the way to the curb or turn the corner completely.
One day, spurred on by K’s increased mileage, I turned the
corner. Where we live, the sidewalk corners at big intersections are covered in
yellow plastic, signifying a crosswalk and stoplight. Usually, I’d get a foot
on that yellow mat, pivot, and turn around to go home. But there I was, faced
with the corner, the stoplight, a turn, and I went forward.
Down the road I continued, and as I ran, I felt a weight
lift from my mind. Here was a new, unbeaten path. Here was freedom. Here was
unchartered territory, a wide sidewalk that stretched for miles, all there for
me to claim should I feel ready to claim it.
I hadn’t yet discovered mapping a run, driving to the
starting point, and going from there, so I’d grown bored with my
start-at-home-run-straight-out-run-straight-back existence. I didn’t really
know I was bored, of course. All I knew was that the run seemed sluggish,
boring, and weirdly difficult for such an easy distance/pace. But when I turned
the corner and saw beyond the hedges all that wide open sidewalk, I knew I’d
discovered something. The brain-shackles fell off and the lightbulb went on.
The first time I ran four miles, I had to walk. But soon I
was running four miles under forty minutes, running even the last two-tenths
that put me over my goal distance because I knew I could do it. Running 4.1 and
4.25 and onward.
Four miles doesn’t seem like a far run, but this was the
first distance I had ever really run on my own, for fun. (Before I ran the
Half, the farthest I had ever run was a 5k. That’s including “training”. Remember
how I said I didn’t train for that?) It
was the first time I realized I really could go farther, and that there was no
limit because my body is an amazing machine that will adapt, progress, adjust,
and grow strong.
This fall, as K and I hit four miles for our training for
the Half in November, the running is for a different purpose. We are actually
sticking to a training plan. Our route takes us down the street where I
originally added the distance, and I sometimes I can hardly believe that it
used to be so difficult to take that one extra step onto a new road.
Looking forward to this weekend and our first official long
run of training, I feel a little daunted. The first step to an increased
distance is always humbling. But I know, thinking about the pride and awe I
felt when I ran a 4-miler for the first time, that the struggle will be worth
it, and in the end I’ll have faced and conquered yet another obstacle, another
fear, and will have come out victorious.
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