Run Away

"How we appreciate something when it is taken away, oh how we

just want to run."

Five months ago if someone told me to go on a 12 minute run I wouldn't have even stepped out the door. I probably would have laughed. .....the irony. 

So today has been my longest run to date since the breaking of the foot. I got to run 4 sets of 3 minutes with 2 minute walks. If you're keeping up with the math that equals a 12 minute run. It wasn't you know....fast. or beautiful. or calming like it used to be. But it was O.K. What it felt like moreso, was that my lungs couldn't keep up with my legs. My legs were on some sort of crazy mission making up for lost time. I don't run often right now, and when I do it's not far. But those 3 minutes are crazy. My fear about my foot breaking starts at least an hour before I run, but it ends the second I start. I thought I would spend every second of all of my future runs agonizing about whether my foot is about to fall apart. But really, it's quite the opposite. Everything that I've felt in the last 5 months all of a sudden comes bursting out of the bottom of my running shoes. It's not fast. But it sure feels fast. 

What is it about frustration, about loss, about sadness, about loneliness, about unhappiness that makes us run faster? Makes us stronger, makes us better. I've noticed that the man (or woman) running away from something moves much faster than the one running towards something. You tell me, who runs faster the gazelle or the lion? There's something about carrying baggage, pain, suffering, sadness that makes us feel the need to run away. It also makes us run away quite quickly. 

As is true with many others, some of the saddest, worst, times of my life were when I experienced the greatest success. When I qualified for NCAA nationals in cross country, it wasn't because I was running towards nationals. It was because I used cross country to run away from my life. And I ran away fast. Adversity, it seems it the greatest companion to human achievement. But why? Why is it that our hardships, and not our achievements make us stronger? The human spirit grows from success but success is found only at the end of hardship. No one with an easy life has ever gone down in history as doing something great. You won't find any significant historical biography that says: "He/She had a really easy and wonderful life and then went on to conquer the world." Most life stories tell of hardship followed by defeat, followed by perseverance, followed by a struggle, followed by success. 

It seems to me that we thrive, not as people think on success and wealth, but we thrive in poverty, and in struggles, and in defeat. No one is inspired by those who are naturally talented or naturally wealthy. We're inspired by those who came from nothing and got knocked down again and again. We become who we are through hardship and not through success. 

I think this is why the best athletes are those who are coming back from something. The best leaders are the ones who came from nothing. The best role models are the ones that learned their lessons the hard way. We admire Nelson Mandela (look it up if you don't know) and not Nicole Richie for a reason people!

The bad news is that the world, at some point, is going to break you. The good news, however, is that it's the only way you're going to learn to get up.

So go ahead, be hurt, be disappointed, run away. It's going to make you fast.