There are times where I'm hunched over, dry heaving. Or clutching my stomach. Or my hips, god, they hurt so bad. Or my shins. Or my feet are so swollen. Or that black toenail. Or my fingers have swollen so bad they barely fit in my gloves. Or my hamstrings or my calves or my quads or my back or my butt hurts.
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| Don't I look like hell? |
And I might start crying.
I hate everything. I'm using every curse word there is, including ones I'm making up (i.e., fucknuts, shitola, assholic). I hate everyone. I hate even the people that love me, and I especially hate my mother for giving birth to me because she should've not done that, she should've known she'd spawn an ultrarunning lunatic. I hate the evil race director and I hate the weather and I hate the bad-tasting water and I hate the runner who just passed me, saying, "Good job."
None of it makes sense, really. I love all of this. But sometimes, you get stuck in the hate. You get sucked by the sadness. You just want to cry.
And I do cry. Loudly. At Miwok 100k, I threw myself into Stan Jensen's arms, bawling.
It's going to hurt. I'm thinking about Umstead, and I know it's going to suck for at least part of the time, hopefully not the majority of the time. Javelina was SO hard, but being with the amazing Jon helped keep my mind off how much pain I was in.
How do you pull out? It's kind of impossible, but things that help me pull out include:
- a pretty view
- a pacer or kickass crew member (like Matt Decker and Dierdre w/ brownies at Vermont 100!)
- eating. M&Ms, Powergel Blasts, and other deliciousness
- Singing. Between Margaritaville and Camp Ten Bears at Vermont, I sang Pink really, really embarrassingly loud.
- A new running partner
I hope I can cultivate these moments of happiness and beauty, but as all runners know, it's hard to create, we just hope it's mostly like that. And that's why we do it.
2 comments:
singing.
At ATY, ray and I spontaneously broke out into some random billy joel song. I don't even remember which song it was. We did it for a lap or so, then we separated.
But I wasn't done. I took my ipod and set it to shuffle billy joel and started singing along.. for the next 20 miles. ray must have thought I was nuts, every time he passed me I was singing some other obscure Joel tune. But I didn't care. It got me through something like miles 60-80.. when I was really hurting and needed a distraction.
Well, I sure am glad that I gave birth to you! You are an amazing, unique, strong, woman and I sure am glad that you are who you are...even though you make me worry like crazy! Running is a huge part of what makes you, you and I have finally accepted and support the insanity that makes you so special! Love you!
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